Thirty-four years is a little while to wait for a follow-up. Margaret Atwood wrote a sequel for The Handmaid's Tale, her 1985 hit dystopian novel, in part to meet the clamour of that book's fans, desperate to know what would happen to its heroine Offred, and how Gilead, the sinister version of the United States from the near future which has subjugated her, might possibly combust.
The result is The Testaments, probably the most eagerly anticipated novel of the year both sides of the Atlantic, and the subject of excitable leaks yesterday.
