Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

Posted by Sonya Procenko

I'll never forget interviewing legendary Canadian author Margaret Atwood in Copenhagen a while ago. She came to Denmark to attend the premiere of an opera based on her bestselling novel, The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood had travelled from Madrid for the event and I asked her what she was doing there. "I'm thinking," she simply replied. Thinking indeed, Margaret Atwood is one of Canada's greatest thinkers.

So I wasn't surprised to hear about her newest non-fiction book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. With the American credit crunch challenging the US economy, her book subject couldn't be more topical and relevant.

Says her publisher Anansi: "In her wide ranging, entertaining, and imaginative approach to the subject, Atwood proposes that debt is like air - something we take for granted until things do wrong. And then, while gasping for breath, we become very interested in it."

The book explores debt as an "ancient and central motif in religion, literature and the structure of human societies..."

"Atwood shows that the idea of what we owe one another - in other words , "debt" - is built into the human imagination and is one of its most dynamic metaphors," says Anansi.

Check out the book here.

Buy a copy at Amazon.ca and Chapters.Indigo.

Image courtesy of Anansi

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Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

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