It better not be. And, of course, it isn’t. Well, not entirely, in Atwood’s telling. She is a Canadian novelist fabled to be a manic collector of facts, an obsessive who throws all interesting bits of news and theory into a big brown box, a grand old woman of letters who writes on ancient myth and contemporary work. In this slim book, she draws on all that to inquire into the biological and philosophical tentacles of debt. But, for those unfamiliar with her fiction, it must be immediately clarified that Atwood is also a novelist of dystopia. So, come to this book expecting at some point dark and extreme predictions of what awaits us.

She argues that for a mental construct like debt to be viable, certain preconditions are necessary, like notions of fairness and equivalent values. But could these notions be biologically wired into us? Research indicates that chimpanzees have a sense of “debts of honour” or “reciprocal altruism”: “Chimp A helps Chimp B to gang up on Chimp C and expects to be helped in turn. If Chimp B then doesn’t come through at the time of Chimp A’s need, Chimp A is enraged and throws a screaming temper tantrum.” Atwood cites other work substantiating the existence of a “cheater-detection module” among the mental organs governing reciprocal altruism. Therefore, there is a mutually dependent relationship between debtor and creditor.

Atwood harks back to myth and literature to ask who is “morally worse” — debtor or creditor? But the feistiest, the most Atwoodian and, therefore, provocative part of the inquiry relates to her view of the future. In her novels, Atwood is a great practitioner of dystopian exaggeration to make the point that truly horrid futures await us if humanity does not mend its ways. In her most defining novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, she warned of what may happen if fundamentalisms that deny women equal status win out. In the more recent Oryx and Crake, she posted a caution on blind application of biotechnology solutions. Perhaps because Payback is not a work of fiction, she is more restrained in prediction-making, but only just.

... contd.