Stone Mattress: Nine Tales

From the bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments--a thrilling, funny, and thought-provoking collection of stories that affirms Atwood as our greatest creator of worlds--and as an incisive chronicler of our darkest impulses.

＂Alphinland,＂ the first of three loosely linked tales, introduces us to a fantasy writer who is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. In ＂Lusus Naturae,＂ a young woman, monstrously transformed by a genetic defect, is mistaken for a vampire. And in the title story, a woman who has killed four husbands discovers an opportunity to exact vengeance on the first man who ever wronged her.

Stone Mattress is a collection of unforgettable tales that reveal the grotesque, delightfully wicked facets of humanity.

作者簡介

瑪格麗特．愛特伍Margaret Atwood

　　1939年出生於渥太華，是加拿大最傑出的小說家、詩人，也寫短篇故事、評論、劇本，並創作兒童文學與圖像小說。她是《紐約時報》暢銷作家、公認的「加拿大文學女王」，更是諾貝爾文學獎呼聲極高的重量級候選人，至今已發表四十多部作品，海外讀者散布四十多國。愛特伍在1985年以小說《使女的故事》榮獲「總督文學獎」，2000年《盲眼刺客》獲英國曼布克文學獎；2005年獲頒愛丁堡圖書節啟蒙獎，得獎理由是對世界文學與思想的傑出貢獻；2008年榮膺西班牙艾斯杜里亞斯親王文學獎；2016年獲英國筆會/品特文學獎。代表作「瘋狂亞當」三部曲正由美國HBO改拍為電視影集，其餘作品在世界各國亦獲獎無數。

　　愛特伍與莎翁的首次邂逅發生在1950年代，當時她在多倫多讀高中，漫長的寫作生涯中，她一直認為莎士比亞影響自己創作甚深。她說：「《暴風雨》在某些層面上，可說是一齣早期的多媒體音樂劇，要是莎翁活在今日，他想必會窮盡手邊所有特效科技來呈現這齣戲；然而《暴風雨》最引人入勝之處，正是劇中留下的許多未解問題。我用盡渾身解數來挑戰這個故事，太過癮了！」

　　Margaret Atwood is Canada's most eminent novelist, poet and critic. Her books include The Edible Woman, Surfacing, Lady Oracle, Alias Grace, Cat's Eye, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and The Handmaid's Tale, which won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction and the Governor-General's Award, was short-listed for the Booker Prize and made into a major film. She lives in Toronto with the writer Graeme Gibson and their daughter.