The Blind Assassin
A 2000 Booker Prize winner structured as a series of nested narratives: a memoir, a pulp science fiction story, and a secret love affair. The forbidden wartime romance at the center of Iris Chase's story is gradually revealed through indirection and misdirection; when its true shape becomes clear, the love is more devastating for having been hidden. Atwood at her most architecturally ambitious.
Atwood makes you wait 600 pages for a reveal you will likely have worked out by page 100. The Planet Zycron pulp interludes, meant as counterpoint, read as the skippable parts they are, and Iris narrates with a withholding so methodical it starts to feel like a delay tactic rather than character.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
