margaret atwood, welcome to hardtalk. thank you.just referred to your prolific and diverse output over many years. but you've just done something you've never done before. you've taken on adapting shakespeare. and you've always said shakespeare is pretty much your favourite author. so how daunting was that? very, very daunting. first of all you knew that you were going to get a lot of people saying that you shouldn't do it, and you can't improve on shakespeare, etc. and second because i took on the tempest. and that has a whole slew of problems of its own. the brief was very broad. so it was, choose a play and do whatever, as long as it's a novel. and i mean, you've created this wonderfully sort of imaginative new take, where it's sort of set in a prison. prospero becomes a guy who is sort of a theatre manager who was thwarted in his career and then goes back to the prison to produce a drama. there's a play within a play. there's a lot of music and dance. it's pretty extraordinary because it's so imaginative and yet, as you say, all

she's margaret atwood this is overheard. (inspiring music) (applause) - [evan] let's be honest is this about the ability to learn or about the experience of not having to talk at all. how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa-- you say that he had made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. you saw a problem and over time took it on-- (laughter) let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak. are you going to run for president? i think i just got an f from you actually. (applause) margaret atwood welcome. - thank you. - very nice to have you here. - lovely to be here. - so interested in this new book, congratulations on it. may i say nobody does dystopian like you do dystopian. (laughs) - is that a compliment? - oh my god it's the biggest compliment in the world. i mean the world that you've created in this book will come back to the handmaid's tale at some point here soon reminiscent to my mind of the dystopia in that book. but i love the plot of this story, i love the characters and i

there is a reason margaret atwood's book jumped back last year. didn't happen for no reason. sure you've asked about this before, what do you make between the parallel of the story and what it is about and the treatment of women. what do you make of this? >> i feel like it is impossible to not draw the parallel and i think we should draw the parallel. that's one of the wonderful things about art and literature it can bring things you feel passionate about. for sometimes my response to this kind of thing is there was sort of this kind of a right wing kind of people saying at one point we were this left wing propaganda show. it is about what it is. it was written 30 years ago. it's about ignorance and stupidity and evil and taking away women's rights and human's rights. if you happen to draw the correlation -- [ laughter ] >> that's on you. we didn't write it. >> and if margaret atwood is that prosthetic 30 years ago, i got two questions. >> decades ago. i welcome that conversation. we should be having. we should be. >> i think does matter. it doesn't matter. i've been followin