Handmaid's Tale sequel leads 'exacting' 2019 Booker prize longlist

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments – not published until September – is chosen alongside 12 other ‘credible winners’ including Salman Rushdie and Jeanette Winterson

• Not read them yet? A cheat’s guide to the 2019 Booker prize longlist
  

Most readers will have to wait until September to find out what happens in Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, but the Booker judges have deemed The Testaments worthy of a place on the 2019 longlist for the £50,000 literary prize.

This is the sixth time the Canadian novelist has been nominated for the Booker, and her first nomination since she won the UK’s most prestigious literary prize for The Blind Assassin in 2000.The Testaments is set 15 years after the end of her dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale. Out on 10 September, the novel’s contents remain a closely guarded secret – with this year’s judges, chaired by Hay festival director Peter Florence, only saying in their statement: “Spoiler discretion and a ferocious non-disclosure agreement prevent any description of who, how, why and even where. So this: it’s terrifying and exhilarating.”

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Vintage, Chatto & Windus)

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