OVIEDO, Spain (AFP) — Canadian author Margaret Atwood said Wednesday that while it was not her "mission" to highlight social problems, a fairy-tale world would be tedious for readers.
"There are aspects of my books that are there because they are present in real life. It's not my mission to carry out this task or else I wouldn't be a writer, I would be a leader of some movement or a propagandist," she told a news conference in the northern Spanish town of Oviedo.
"It would bore us all to read something where everything is wonderful, where everything goes well, without any problems," she added.
Atwood, 68, will be awarded Spain's prestigious Prince of Asturias prize for literature, named after Crown Prince Felipe, on Friday in Oviedo.
She beat 32 other nominees from 24 countries, including Britain's Ian McEwan, for the award worth 50,000 euros (66,000 dollars) which was handed out last year to Israeli author Amoz Oz.
When it announced its decision in June, the prize jury said Atwood "offers in her novels a politically committed, critical view of the world and contemporary society".
Eight Prince of Asturias prizes are awarded each year in categories such as arts, scientific research, sports, letters and humanities.
Atwood has written more than 30 books of essays, poetry and fiction.
Her 1985 science fiction novel "The Handmaid's Tale" set in a United States that is run by religious theocracy that uses women for breeding was banned from several US high schools.
Atwood was nominated for Britain's Booker Prize three times and finally won it in 2000 with "The Blind Assassin", a multilayered family memoir and meditation on narrative and female bonding.
Her latest book on the cultural and historical aspects of borrowing called "Payback: Debt as Metaphor and the Shadow Side of Wealth" has hit bookstores in North America and Britain just as banks around the world are struggling with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
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