Margaret Atwood Announces 'Handmaid's Tale' Book Sequel, Promises It'll Be 'Everything You’ve Ever Asked'

Margaret Atwood
Michael Tran/FilmMagic

The novel will hit shelves Sept. 10, 2019.

Blessed be the fruit, fans are getting even more Gilead!

On Wednesday, Margaret Atwood announced that she's writing a followup to her 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale. Slated to be published on Sept. 10, 2019, The Testaments is set 15 years after Offred's final scene. It will be narrated by three female characters.

"Everything you've ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything," a quote video set to eerie music reads. "The other inspiration is the world we've been living in." 

Atwood also clarified that The Testaments "is not connected to the television adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale."

The novel and series are set in Gilead, a dystopian totalitarian society in what used to be the United States. In the near-future world, fertile women are made to serve as handmaids, sexual servants who are assigned to a couple and forcibly impregnated. Both iterations of the story follow a handmaid named Offred who fights against the new world. 

Starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred, the Hulu series, which premiered in 2017 and completed its second season this summer, has been off-book since the season one finale of the show. Its freshman finale concluded much the way the novel does, with Offred being taken off in a van by guards, her destination and safety unknown.

Though the series' second season went on to show that Offred got to relative safety, the book's ending has remained ambiguous since its publication. The third season of the Emmy-winning series is currently in production and is likely to be released in 2019.

Back in September, ET's Lauren Zima caught up with Joseph Fiennes -- who plays Commander Waterford in the show -- and he teased what fans can expect in the third season.

"I think now's the time for some kind of uprising," Fiennes, 48, said of the upcoming season. "Hold on to your seats. I think something big is going to happen."

Watch the video below for more with the actor:

RELATED CONTENT: