Margaret Atwood will release the sequel to "The Scarlet Maid" in 2019

"The Scarlet Servant", dystopia on a nightmarish America turned into a theocracy after a coup d'etat, will see a sequel next September, "The Testaments", whose action will take place 15 years after the end of the successful novel adapted to television, announced Wednesday its author, the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood.

"I'm writing a sequel to + The # HandmaidsTale + (The Scarlet Maid, Ed.). + # TheTestaments + (The Wills) takes place 15 years after the last scene of Offred and is told by three female characters, "tweeted Ms. Atwood.

This new book will be published on September 10, 2019.

The 79-year-old Canadian accompanied her publication with a short video message noting that "everything you've asked me about Gilead and its inner workings serves as inspiration for this book. In fact, almost everything! The extra inspiration is the world in which we live. "

"The Scarlet Servant" is a dystopian novel released in 1985 that has had its impact increased tenfold by its adaptation to television, in the form of a series whose broadcast began in April 2017 on the American platform Hulu.

The plot takes place in a very near future when the United States was overthrown by a religious dictatorship, the "Gilead Republic", at a time when, for unclear environmental reasons, humans have seen their fertility collapse .

The few women still able to procreate, such as the heroine Offred, embodied on screen by Elisabeth Moss, were turned into sex slaves in the service of Gilead's leaders who raped them during monthly religious ceremonies.

Very quickly, this apocalyptic account relegating the female population to an object became the anti-Trump's one as a parable of the American conservative drift and the sexual assaults suffered by women.

The red suit worn by the women of the "Gilead Republic", reminiscent of nuns' uniforms, has emerged as a rallying cry: ubiquitous in the United States during the battle against confirmation at the Supreme Court of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, accused of attempted rape when he was high school student, has reappeared in protests for women's rights and the right to abortion, or in recent months in Argentina, Ireland, Belgium or Poland.