Margaret Atwood delivers 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.
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