What can you say about Margaret Atwood that hasn’t been said? She has been nominated for countless awards (including 5 Booker Awards, winning once) and is just brilliant all around. I recommend checking out her Twitter (it’s political, about books and writing, about people who’ve been influenced by her works, and about any random thing she decides to mention).
I was first introduced to Margaret Atwood through The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopic feminist novel written in the early 1980s. I’ll probably reread The Handmaid’s Tale next year and I’ll review it, but I definitely recommend it (especially if you read it and either precede or follow it with Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time [Wikipedia link]).