Canadian author of The Testaments refuses to rule it out, saying she was pushed to writing the sequel by US moves to police women’s bodies

The growing similarities between the US and her fictional regime of Gilead, where women’s bodies are policed by a totalitarian state, helped prompt Margaret Atwood into writing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, the author has said.

The Testaments was released worldwide today, 34 years after the story of Offred ended in the first book. Speaking about it publicly for the first time, Atwood said that there had been “many requests for a sequel” over the intervening years, but she “always said no”.

“However, as time moved on, instead of moving further away from Gilead we moved towards it, particularly in the US, and I re-examined that position,” said the 79-year-old novelist, who attended a midnight launch for the novel in London the previous evening.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Copies of The Testaments on display in a London branch of Waterstones. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

“I decided that although I could not continue with the story of Offred, I could continue with three other people and tell the story of the beginning of the end. We know from The Handmaid’s Tale that Gilead vanishes, it’s no longer present 200 years later because we’re having a symposium on it … So how did it collapse? How do these kinds of regimes disappear? I was interested in exploring that and also what it would be like for the second generation.”

She sent a two-paragraph summary to her publishers in February 2017. The acclaimed television adaptation, which the novelist reads scripts for, but claims to have “no actual power” over, began in April that year.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood – read the exclusive first extract Read more

The Testaments follows three characters: two young women, one who grows up inside Gilead and one who has been brought up in Canada; and Aunt Lydia, a fearsome and opaque figure in The Handmaid’s Tale, who reveals how she survived during the earliest days of the regime.

Atwood believes her new story “enters into a conversation that’s already taking place”, with legislative moves affecting women’s rights in several US states meaning that “some of them are already there [in Gilead]”.

“What these restrictive laws about women’s bodies are claiming is that the state owns your body. There is a parallel occasion for men and that would be the draft: the state owns your body and you have to go to war. But when they do that, they pay for clothes, lodging, food, medical expenses and a salary,” said a deeply sardonic Atwood.

“I say unto them, if you want to conscript women’s bodies in this way, you’re forcing women to deliver babies, forced childbirth, and you’re not paying for any of it. It is very cheap, amongst other things. For a society claiming to value individual freedom I would say to them, you evidently don’t think those freedoms extend to women.”

Until the cold war ended, Atwood said, “the US was selling itself as the alternative to the cold war evil empire. They were the land of freedom, democracy, opportunity for all, and therefore they were not showcasing their shadow side … once that opponent was gone, everything could come out of the cupboard that had always been there. Out it has come.”

With protesters around the world adopting the red costumes of the Handmaids to silently campaign for women’s rights, including demonstrations in Ireland, Argentina and recently in Texas, where an all-male council voted to ban abortion in June, Atwood said her creations worked as a form of civil protest.

“You’re not making a disturbance, not saying anything ... you’re all covered up, no frightful bare shoulders,” she said. “None of this would be happening if countries were not putting other people in charge of women’s bodies. If everything were fair and equitable, and government really was by consent of the governed, only potentially pregnant women would be able to vote on these matters.”

With The Testaments shortlisted for the Booker prize – judges called it a “savage and beautiful novel” which “speaks to us today, all around the world, with particular conviction and power” – and readers so desperate to get their hands on the book that they were queueing up for it at midnight, Atwood gave a wry smile to suggestions that she is a literary rock star.

“Considering the lives rock stars lead, I hope not. I haven’t yet died of an opiate overdose, not yet, but there’s time,” she said. “This kind of thing could be quite ruinous for a 35-year-old because where do you go from there? But in my case we kind of know the answer.” One thing she refused to rule out was whether she would ever return to Gilead again: “Never say never to anything.”