Alias Grace
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| Author | Margaret Atwood |
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| Cover Artist | Dante Gabriel Rossetti (first edition painting), Kong (first edition design) |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Historical fiction |
| Publisher | McClelland and Stewart (first edition), Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (first U.K. edition) |
| Released | September 19, 1996 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 470 pages (first edition), 469 pages |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-7710-0835-X (first edition), ISBN 0-7475-2787-3 |
Alias Grace is a novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1996.
The novel deals with the notorious murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Upper Canada in 1843. Two servants of the Kinnear household, Grace Marks and James McDermott, were convicted of the crime. James McDermott was hanged and Grace Marks was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Although the novel is based on factual events, Atwood constructs a narrative that sees a fictional doctor, Simon Jordan, playing detective. Although ostensibly conducting research into criminal behaviour, he slowly becomes personally involved in the story of Grace Marks and seeks to reconcile the mild mannered woman he sees with the murder of which she has been convicted.
Alias Grace won the Canadian Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1996.
Some literary critics noted eerie parallels between Grace Marks and a more contemporary Canadian criminal figure, Karla Homolka. In both trials, significant controversy was raised by the question of whether they had actively participated in the murders, or were simply unwitting accessories.
Atwood also wrote an earlier work, the 1974 CBC Television film The Servant Girl, about Marks. However, in Alias Grace Atwood says that she has changed her opinion on the question of Marks' culpability.
