Atwood on Debt

Payback
Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
House of Anansi Press, November 2008

Publisher Description: 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.

Margaret Atwood’s old-fashioned approach to debt
Interveiw by Sinclair Stewart
GlobeInvestor.com
Friday, September 26, 2008