Lady Oracle

Originally published in 1976, Lady Oracle is a masterful achievement about the unravelling of one woman's many secret lives—and her escape from them—abound in Atwood's trademark wit, humour, and insight.

Joan Foster is a woman of many secrets—and even more identities. To her husband, she is a loyal, uncomplicated wife. To her readers, she is the anonymous author of sweeping gothic romances. To herself, she is something far messier: a woman haunted by a miserable childhood, a string of disastrous affairs, and a body she has never quite made peace with. But when her new outrageously feminist book becomes a bestseller and her biggest fan becomes a dangerous one, Joan does what she has always done—she runs.

Faking her own death, she flees to a sun-drenched Italy, certain that a clean break is all she needs. She is, of course, spectacularly wrong.

Studded with hair-raising comic escapades, delicious suspense, and piercing psychological insights, Lady Oracle is a shape-shifting masterpiece about identity, survival, and the strange liberation of losing yourself completely.