Margaret Atwood didn't want to write a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, because she thought it would fail.

Key points: Margaret Atwood resisted writing the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale because she couldn't find the right voice

Margaret Atwood resisted writing the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale because she couldn't find the right voice Ann Dowd's performance in the television series inspired Atwood to write from Aunt Lydia's perspective

Ann Dowd's performance in the television series inspired Atwood to write from Aunt Lydia's perspective She rejects claims that The Handmaid's Tale is prophetic, saying its resonance today is just timing and luck

But three decades on she has published The Testaments, set in Gilead 15 years after the end of The Handmaid's Tale.

She understood people wanted to know what happened to Offred, but it was the book she just couldn't write.

"It would have been like the people who write other Sherlock Holmes stories," she told 7.30.

"We know what you're trying to do, but it still doesn't entirely convince us."

Her main concern was that she couldn't recreate Offred's voice.

"It would have been a horrible mistake to have attempted it."

The sequel

The Testaments was released last week. ( ABC News )

Atwood first had the idea for the highly anticipated sequel around 2015, although even then she was unsure whether she should write it.

"That stage is always, am I going to do this, am I not going to do this?" she said.

"And I wrote a note to my publishers in February of 2017 saying, this is the book."

The Testaments is narrated by Aunt Lydia — for those unfamiliar with The Handmaid's Tale, Aunt Lydia is the ruthless instructor who indoctrinates handmaids into Gilead's new world order.

It portrays her as more of a complex character, whilst also providing answers to Gilead's creation and its eventual demise.

In The Handmaid's Tale there wasn't a backstory about Aunt Lydia's life before she became a foundational member of the new society.

"We didn't know how she got there," Atwood said.

"In The Testaments I was interested in a couple of things; how she got that way and also how regimes crumble, how regimes fall apart."

It was the award-winning television series that sparked the idea for the book.

"I have to say that the performance of Ann Dowd really, really enriched the concept of character. Ann Dowd in the series made her a much more well-rounded character."

Power and influence

Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid's Tale TV series. ( Supplied: SBS )

While on the surface Atwood's work appears to be feminist in nature, she argues that is too simplistic.

She is intrigued by power, how it is used and who gets to make the decisions.

"I am interested in who gets a say, who gets to make the laws, who doesn't get to make the laws," she said.

In The Testaments Aunt Lydia is just one of three female leads, but they are not always portrayed in flattering light.

Like men, they also misuse their power.

"It's not a given that women will work in the interests of women," Atwood said.

But The Testaments does not simply paint men as the enemy. Rather, it's the extremist ideology that gives men the power and women a series of tough choices.

"Any group oppressing, imperialising, ruling over another group, usually raises an army of controllers or a group of controllers from within that group," Atwood said.

"Why? It's cheaper, easier, and it works better."

For Atwood, power, not gender, is the key to Gilead.

Author. Poet. Prophet?

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Two years ago, The New Yorker labelled Atwood 'the prophet of dystopia', a title she rejects.

She argues that any "prophecy" comes down to timing — and luck.

"When you look at the intersections of certain events you think, well that was luck ... it was happenstance that these things are together," she said.

"I'm not a prophet."

But it is hard to ignore the relevance of The Handmaid's Tale today, despite it being written in 1985.

Some of the core elements of society in the Trump era are making people more nervous about what the future entails in the West.

"In the 1990s, The Handmaid's Tale seemed to be receding into the farthest past," she said.

"Now it seems to be coming closer and closer."

The TV series has focused attention on the issues, and people are no longer viewing the story's dystopian vision as a fantasy, but a real possibility.

Either way, Atwood hopes her work will live on and imagines herself hovering over their shoulders of readers.

"Am I going to haunt my own archives?" she laughed.

"I certainly hope so."