Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (2008 CBC Massey Lectures) by Margaret Atwood - October 2008

Toronto: House of Anansi Press, October 2008. Trade Paperback. Second printing. New. Pristine inside and out. No remainder mark. Not damaged. 230 pages.

Collected here, the Massey Lectures from novelist Margaret Atwood investigate the subject of debt. She doesn't talk about high finance or managing money; instead, she goes far deeper to explore debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. By looking at how debt has informed our thinking from preliterate times to the present day, from the stories we tell of revenge and sin to the way we order social relationships, Atwood argues that the idea of what we owe may well be built into the human imagination as one of its most dynamic metaphors. Her final lecture addresses the notion of a debt to nature and the need to find new ways of interacting with the natural world before it is too late.