Life Before Manexplores the lives of three people imprisoned by walls of their own construction and in thrall to the tragicomedy we call love.

Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality and suppressed rage, has just lost her latest lover to suicide. Nate, her gentle, indecisive husband, is planning to leave her for Lesje, a perennial innocent who prefers dinosaurs to men. Hanging over them all is the ghost of Elizabeth's dead lover, and the dizzying threat of three lives careening inevitably towards the same climax.

Margaret Atwood is Canada's most eminent novelist, poet and critic. Her books includeThe Edible Woman, Surfacing, Lady Oracle, Life Before Man, Bodily Harm, The Handmaid's Tale(winner of both the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction and the Governor-General's Award, shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made in a major film).Cat's Eye(also shortlisted for the Booker Prize)The Robber BrideandAlias Grace. Finally,The Blind Assassinwon the Booker Prize in 2000. She lives in Toronto with the writer Graeme Gibson and their daughter.

'A splendid work...superb' - Marilyn French