'Unburnable' edition of 'The Handmaid’s Tale' up for auction
STORY: This 'unburnable' edition of 'The Handmaid’s Tale' is up for auction
Margaret Atwood has partnered with Penguin Random House
to raise awareness about book banning in the U.S.
[Kalika Sands, Associate specialist, Books and Manuscripts Department, Sotheby’s] "It's really quite a literal interpretation. So this book was made in conjunction with PEN America and Random House. And PEN supports authors and artists and works to fight censorship. So with a book such as 'The Handmaid's Tale' that is frequently banned and burned, this book in every way resists that sort of censorship."
"It'll be auctioned on the 7th of June. The pre-sale estimate was $50,000 to $100,000. It's already reached the high estimate, so who knows where it'll go from here. ‘’
All proceeds will go to PEN America
a nonprofit focused on free expression through literature
Over 1,000 titles have been removed from school libraries and classrooms
across the U.S. between July 2021 and March 2022
Source: PEN America
"Book banning and censorship is a tricky issue, from Mark Twain to now. Some of the issues that are most pressing, most resonant are the ones that end up being sort of difficult to tackle. So I think that many of the themes in 'The Handmaid's Tale' are particularly relevant today, and they've remained relevant since it was first published in 1985."
