Margaret Atwood writes short story to critique book ban in Alberta

Margaret Atwood has released a new short story critiquing elected officials for a wide-ranging book ban in the Canadian province of Alberta.

- Leyland Cecco

The decision to remove books purportedly containing "explicit sexual content" has led to numerous works of literature being swept up in the dragnet, including Atwood's dystopian work, The Handmaid's Tale.

Atwood wrote on social media that since her famed work was no longer permissible in Alberta schools, she had written a "suitable" short work for teens, adding that it was necessary because the province's minister of education thought students were "stupid babies".

The extremely brief story traces the lives of John and Mary, two "very, very good" children.

"They never picked their noses or had bowel movements or zits," she wrote in the opening lines, adding that they were ardent Christians who "paid no attention to what Jesus actually said about the poor" and instead "practised selfish rapacious capitalism" in the vein of the conservative literary hero Ayn Rand.