Margaret Atwood is Canada's most eminent novelist and poet. She also writes short stories, critical studies, screenplays, radio scripts and books for children and her works having been translated into over 30 languages. Atwood is perhaps best known, for her novels and the first of these called “The Edible Woman” was published in 1969. "Alias Grace", "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Cat's Eye" have all been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction."The Blind Assassin" was successful in winning this prize in 2000.

Margaret Atwood has just completed a reading tour of Germany with her latest novel “The Year of the Flood.” In this week’s Inspired Minds Margaret Atwood talks to Breandáin O’Shea about her new book - a futuristic account of the aftermath of a major natural disaster that seems to have obliterated most of humankind. She also talks about how she started to write one of her best-known books "The Handmaid's Tale" in Berlin and how she believes anyone who writes a book must be an optimist.