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Margaret Atwood is to take part in a 40-date three-month international tour of “green” literary and musical performances to launch her novel The Year of the Flood (Bloomsbury).
Each event will comprise six hymns written by Atwood alongside a one-hour reading scripted from the novel, read by the author and two others. Atwood told The Bookseller that the performances aren’t plays: “I will provide a continuity narration so that people who have never heard of the book will get the general thread. And of course because it’s a book launch it won’t end at the end.”
Set in an environmental dystopia, The Year of the Flood focuses on a green cult called God’s Gardeners. Atwood’s hymns, which are interspersed throughout the novel, outline their animal and plant-loving creed, and have been put to music by US composer Orville Stoeber.
The tour will raise money for environmental organisations such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, a partner to Birdlife International, of which Atwood is a joint honorary president. Choirs local to each host city have been chosen to reduce carbon footprint—Atwood will be the only member of the cast to travel. The whole tour will be carbon neutralised through a company called Zerofootprint.
Atwood added: “We want the events to be within the strictures of the God’s Gardeners. Therefore if people are served coffee it will have to be shade-grown organic, because non-shade grown, non-organic coffee is a big killer of birds.”
Despite the ambitious nature of the tour Atwood was quite blase and added: “I’ve been doing this sort of thing since high school. It’s just an old way of doing things.”
However, she added that putting music to the hymns wasn't planned: “These things just kind of happen. You’d think I’d planned them but I don’t. They just stumble along. My agent’s partner is a musician and he got into the manuscript and the spirit struck him.”
The tour will take Atwood to the US, Canada, Holland, Germany and Austria. The UK leg kicks off in Edinburgh on 20th August, continuing to London, Cardiff, Bath, Ely, and Bristol.
Talent taking part in the UK events include: Richard Holloway, Samantha Giles, Simon Cook and Diana Quick.
For a full list of tour dates visit www.yearoftheflood.com.