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Iris describes the 1945 death of her sister, who drives her car off a bridge, followed, two years later, by the death of her husband, in a story that features a novel-within-a-novel about two unnamed lovers who meet in a dark backstreet room.

It is a work of historical fiction with the major events of Canadian history forming an important backdrop, for example, the On-to-Ottawa Trek and a 1934 Communist rally at Maple Leaf Gardens. Greater verisimilitude is given by a series of newspaper articles commenting on events and on the novel's characters from a distance.

The work was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2000 and the Hammett Prize in 2001 and also received a number of other nominations.

The Blind Assassin is Atwood's second highest-selling novel after The Handmaid's Tale, having sold over half a million copies of hard-cover and paper-back combined.