Felix applies for a job in a “Literacy through Literature” program at the nearby Fletcher County Correctional Institute.

He needs to “break out of cell.” The prison metaphor is as central to the novel as it is to Shakespeare’s play. After several years lived alone, spying via the internet on Tony - his once loyal colleague, now mortal enemy, who has moved on to a job in government as Minister of Heritage - and communing with an imagined reincarnation of his daughter Miranda, Felix fears he is losing his grip. Duke!), mourning his family and contemplating his revenge. Adrift and depressed, he finds a deserted hovel, not far from the festival town of Makeshiweg, where he lives under an alias (Mr.

In the midst of his directorial preparations, he is summarily ousted from his post by his conniving, self-promoting business partner, Tony Price. Seeking to overcome his grief at the loss of both his wife (to a staph infection) and his three-year-old daughter Miranda (to meningitis), he throws himself into planning a knockout Tempest that he hopes will in some small way assuage his grief. Atwood is at her bewitching best in this gripping tale of betrayal and revenge that, incidentally, also displays her deep knowledge of The Tempest.įelix Phillips is the artistic director of a popular Canadian theater festival known for its daring productions of Shakespeare. A hag-seed is the offspring of a witch, so the title of Atwood’s novel is a double entendre, for it refers not only to Caliban, “got by the devil himself” of his witch-mother Sycorax, but also to Atwood’s novel, born of Shakespeare’s late play. “HAG-SEED, HENCE! Fetch us in fuel and be quick,” commands Prospero, in answer to Caliban’s well-known taunt, “You taught me language and my profit on’t/Is, I know how to curse.” Margaret Atwood takes the title for her new novel Hag-Seed from the second scene of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a shouting match between Prospero and his slave, Caliban, in which they hurl insults back and forth.

Tempest hagseed