| Trade Paperback
Margaret Atwood | House Of Anansi Press | October 1, 2008
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The most prestigious and eagerly anticipated nonfiction series of
the year teams up with legendary poet, novelist, and essayist
Margaret Atwood to deliver a surprising look at the topic of debt -
a timely subject during our current period of economic upheaval,
caused by the collapse of a system of interlocking debts. In her
wide ranging, entertaining, and imaginative approach to the
subject, Atwood proposes that debt is like air - something we take
for granted until things go wrong. And then, while gasping for
breath, we become very interested in it.
Payback is not a book about practical debt management or
high finance, although it does touch upon these subjects. Rather,
it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and
central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human
societies. By investigating how debt has informed our thinking from
preliterate times to the present day through the stories we tell
each other, through our concepts of "balance," "revenge," and
"sin," and in the way we form our social relationships, Atwood
shows that the idea of what we owe one another - in other words,
"debt" - is built into the human imagination and is one of its most
dynamic metaphors.