“Atwood, 67, has written 11 novels. The Blind Assassin won her the Booker in 2005, her fourth nomination. She has published some 40 books as a poet, children’s writer and essayist. Many of her novels have become plays, from her first, The Edible Woman (1969), to her most famous, the postapocalyptic The Handmaid’s Tale, which Harold Pinter also adapted for a 1990 film and which even became an opera by the Danish composer Poul Ruders. Now Atwood’s first play will be seen from July 27, when her adaptation of her own The Penelopiad begins in Stratford. Can she succeed where Dickens and Eliot did not?”