Just about a year ago, Hogarth Shakespeare launched an ambitious new project, commissioning acclaimed contemporary novelists to write prose retellings of Shakespeare’s plays. Beginning with Jeanette Winterson, Howard Jacobson and Anne Tyler, the series now continues with Margaret Atwood, who offers her contemporary take on “The Tempest” with HAG-SEED.

Atwood opens her novel at a prestigious Canadian Shakespeare festival, similar, one imagines, to the real-life Stratford Festival. In recent years, the artistic director, Felix, has thrown himself entirely into his art, hoping to submerge his grief over the sudden deaths of his beloved wife and young daughter, Miranda. But his dedication to his art may be at his own peril. While he turned his attention away from administrative matters, the festival’s executive director has been plotting how to get rid of Felix, claiming that he has been losing his edge. He’s summarily fired, just as he was beginning rehearsals for a new, cutting-edge production of “The Tempest.”

"Atwood closes her novel much as Shakespeare concludes his play, and although the volume ends with a traditional synopsis of 'The Tempest,' readers will likely find they don’t even need to read it. Thanks to Atwood, they’ll already understand."

Adrift and alone (except for Miranda’s spirit, which accompanies and at times prompts him), Felix finds himself as a tenant in a remote cabin, eventually taking a part-time position teaching literacy through Shakespeare at the nearby correctional facility. He operates under an assumed name (“Mr. Duke”) so that he won’t be recognized. But when it turns out that two federal government officials responsible for renewing the program’s funding will be coming to see the inmates’ new production of “The Tempest,” and that those officials are the self-same gentlemen responsible for Felix’s fall from grace, he begins to plot his revenge.

Like “The Tempest” itself, Atwood’s creative retelling begins in a moment of chaos --- a prison riot --- but then steps back to explain the events leading up to that moment, so that when we revisit that scene a couple hundred pages later, we more or less understand what’s going on, even if some of the characters’ motivations --- not to mention Felix’s sanity --- remain ambiguous. At first, it can be difficult to discern exactly how Atwood is repurposing Shakespeare’s original play, beyond the obvious “play within a play” aspect of the plot. She even appears at points to play with readers’ expectations about the retelling: “For a time, Felix tried to amuse himself by casting [his new neighbors] in his own personal ‘Tempest’--- his ‘Tempest’ of the headspace --- but that didn’t last long. None of it fitted: Bert the husband wasn’t the devil, and young Crystal, a podgy, stubby child, could not be imagined as the sylph-like Miranda.” When readers at last realize the form Atwood’s retelling is taking, it is both surprising and satisfying, a moment when they say not only “aha” but also “of course.”

Themes of imprisonment and freedom run throughout HAG-SEED, as they do more or less literally in Shakespeare’s play. There are also themes of forgiveness and redemption, of the hollowness of revenge and the healing power of artistic creation, whether through music, dance or theater. Atwood closes her novel much as Shakespeare concludes his play, and although the volume ends with a traditional synopsis of “The Tempest,” readers will likely find they don’t even need to read it. Thanks to Atwood, they’ll already understand.