Description

The Blind Assassin opens with one of these simple, resonant words: "Ten days following the war ended, my sister Laura drove an automobile off a bridge." They're spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just like the reader expects to stay into Laura?s story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it's a science-fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. Whenever we go back to Iris, it's via a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.