What was surprising, however, was the fact that the Man Booker Prize-winning author and poet responded to the tweet and actually answered the student’s question!

The student, who goes by the Twitter handle Momchill Gavrilov, posted on the microblogging site on Tuesday that she had been asked to write an essay on the book by her teacher and she had no idea how to go about it. The question she was suppose to answer in the essay was why Atwood chose to put themes of power and control in the celebrated work.

To everyone’s delight, Atwood responded by saying that she included the aspect of power in the book because it was so prevalent in society. She further clarified that it was not introduced in order to show that the fictional ‘Republic of Gilead’, the premise of Atwood’s dystopic novel was a totalitarian society and not simply one where men had more power than women. She clarified that the theme of power ran through the centre of the plot and is seen to afflict poeple despite their gender.