QUEEN OF THE RESISTANCE

The idea that the global order can change quickly and devastatingly informs nearly everything Margaret Atwood has written. At 86, she's a literary seer and saint. So what does the author make of our dystopian world?

- Lisa Allardice

Margaret Atwood is doing her grocery shopping in her local supermarket in Toronto, and it is taking longer than usual. This is not because The Handmaid’s Tale author turns 86 this month, but because she is checking the provenance of every item before it goes in her trolley: California satsumas out; Canada spuds in. Atwood is a passionate environmentalist, but at the moment she is more worried about boycotting anything that comes from over the border in the US than air miles. “Elbows up!” she declares, taking a furious stance in the fruit and veg aisle.

Back in her kitchen she shows me a YouTube skit of the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, and comedian Mike Myers in the national hockey kit to explain the significance of “Elbows up”, a growing gesture of Canadian resistance. “Oh, they’re angry. They’re furious,” she says of the reaction to President Trump’s proposed plans to make Canada the 51st state of America. “We’ve not got a very big army. If they wanted to invade they could do so. But I don’t think they would. Do they have any idea what it would be like to try to occupy a hostile Canada? It would not be a joke.” Trump would have to deal with Atwood, for starters.