Shortly after the end of World War II, Iris Chase’s sister Laura drives off a bridge in Port Ticonderoga, Canada. A newspaper article announcing Laura’s death describes it as an accident, but Iris believes that it was a suicide. Prior to Laura’s death, she wrote a book called The Blind Assassin, which was published posthumously in 1947. In the book’s prologue, an unnamed man and woman sit at a picnic together, smiling. In the next passage of Laura’s book, the man tells the woman a story about an alien planet called Zycron.
Another newspaper article details the death of Richard E. Griffen, a prominent manufacturer and Iris’s husband, one month after Laura’s suicide. He died in a boat under mysterious circumstances and he’s survived by Iris, his sister Winifred, and his 10-year-old daughter Aimee.
Meanwhile, the man in The Blind Assassin tells the woman about Sakiel-Norn, a city on Zycron that has a strictly segregated caste system. In The Blind Assassin, the man tells the woman about how enslaved children on Sakiel-Norn are forced to make carpets until they go blind, at which point they are sold into brothels. Those who manage to escape become hired assassins. The city also practices human sacrifice, although most of its inhabitants have lost their religious faith.
Another newspaper article announces the death of Aimee, Richard and Iris’s daughter and 4-year-old Sabrina’s mother. Aimee was a drug user; she neglected Sabrina, who is now in her great-aunt Winifred’s care.
In the 1870s, Iris’s grandfather Benjamin builds a button factory in Port Ticonderoga, Canada. Benjamin marries Adelia, a woman from an “established” Montreal family that is running out of money. The couple has three sons: Edgar, Percival, and Norval. Adelia dies of cancer in 1913; just before this, a young woman named Reenie begins working in Benjamin and Adelia’s home, Avilion, as a nursemaid and housekeeper. Norval, Iris’s father, proposes to her mother, Liliana, at an ice-skating party. Liliana is a serious, deeply religious person who dedicates her life to helping the less fortunate.
Iris is born in 1916, during the World War I. Within the same month, both Edgar and Percival are killed in the war. When Norval returns home to Canada, he has lost his religious faith and he develops a drinking problem. In 1919, Laura is born. Five years later, Liliana becomes pregnant again. One day, she collapses in the kitchen, suffers a miscarriage, and passes away a few days later. Before dying, Liliana asks Iris to promise to take care of Laura. A few years later, when the Great Depression arrives, Norval gets involved with the relief effort, which leads Richard Griffen to publicly criticize him in the press. Across Canada, violence erupts between striking workers and the authorities.
In The Blind Assassin, the man keeps telling the story of Zycron, describing a girl who is about to be sacrificed and a blind assassin who is hired to kill her as part of a plot to overthrow the King of Sakiel-Norn.
Back in the main narrative, a strike and lockout takes place at Norval’s button factory. As children, Iris and Laura spend a lot of time alone together running around Avilion. Norval begins dating a 28-year-old bohemian sculptor named Callista Fitzsimmons, who goes by Callie. At this time, Iris and Laura are tutored by an older unmarried woman they nickname Miss Violence, then by a man named Mr. Erskine who molests Laura. However, when Laura tells Iris this, Iris doesn’t believe her. The Depression forces life at Avilion to become more austere. On the annual Labour Day celebration thrown by Chase and Sons, Laura introduces Iris to a friend she’s made, a young union organizer and writer named Alex Thomas. The editor of the local newspaper, Elwood Murray, takes a picture of the three of the them sitting together. When Reenie sees the girls sitting with Alex, she chastises them. However, Laura has already invited Alex to dinner; Richard and Winifred are coming too.
Laura pretends to be interested in photography in order to steal the negative of the photograph of her, Alex, and Iris. Meanwhile, squeezed by the Depression, Norval reluctantly announces that the button factory will temporarily close. This infuriates the workers, who call for a solidarity strike which turns into a riot. The button factory is burned down; effigies of Norval, Laura, and Iris are burned; and local businesses not taking part in the strike are smashed. Alex is accused of being one of the instigators, and in the aftermath, Laura secretly hides him in the attic of Avilion. When Iris finds out about this she is initially angry, but then she agrees to join Laura in helping to hide Alex. One day, Iris goes up to the attic without Laura, and Alex kisses her. Shortly after, Iris, Laura, and Alex decide the time is right to sneak Alex out to freedom. After he goes, Iris gets the sense that Laura loves him, though she doesn’t admit it outright.
Laura spends more and more time helping with the church’s relief effort. Norval tells Iris that Richard is going to propose to her, and he pressures her to accept in order to save the button factory and secure Laura’s future. They do get engaged, and afterward Winifred takes Iris for lunch and begins her efforts to shape Iris into a proper society woman. The night before the wedding, Laura begs Iris not to marry Richard.
In The Blind Assassin, the woman brings money and supplies to the man, who has been hiding out in different apartments. He keeps telling the woman the story about Zycron, explaining how the blind assassin prepared to kill the girl about to be sacrificed, but how he ended up falling in love with her instead. The girl and the blind assassin escape Sakiel-Norn just as a rival tribe are about to attack the city. On another occasion, while waiting for the woman, the man constructs a more trashy, salacious science-fiction story—the kind he sells to make money.
In the present, Iris (now an elderly woman) tries to contact her lawyer, Mr. Sykes, to write her will. She knows that after she dies, Reenie’s daughter Myra will probably sort through her belongings. Back in the 1930s, Iris and Richard go on honeymoon. When they return to Canada, Iris learns that Norval died while she was away and that Richard deliberately hid the telegrams informing her of this fact. Because Laura is still only 15, she comes to live with Richard and Iris in Toronto, where she is enrolled in a private school called St. Cecilia’s. Laura runs away, however; Richard and Iris find her working at a waffle booth at an amusement park and they bring her home.
In The Blind Assassin, the man ends the story of the blind assassin and the girl by having them be eaten by wolves. The woman is horrified by this grim ending. Later, they meet again at a restaurant. The man informs the woman that he is about to leave the country (it’s implied that he’s going to fight in the Spanish Civil War). The woman promises to leave her husband for him when he comes back, but the man asks her to do it now. The woman says that she can’t because she wouldn’t have any money to survive.
In the 30’s, Richard plans a run for political office. Laura is expelled from St. Cecilia’s for being disruptive, questioning the Bible, and faking doctor’s appointments to skip school. Laura protests that she doesn’t want or need to be in school at all. Iris, Laura, Richard, and Winifred go to London on vacation, then New York, followed by Avilion. When they get to Port Ticonderoga, Richard informs them that he fired Reenie after Laura came to live with them in Toronto. Winifred mentions that Callie was recently arrested at a communist party and that Richard bailed her out. While Laura and Iris are alone, Laura brings up Mr. Erskine and the fact that Iris never believed that he was molesting her. By the time Laura turns 17, Winifred is growing desperate to marry her off. Around this time, Iris becomes pregnant. Shortly after, Richard and Winifred inform Iris that they sent Laura to a mental institution called BellaVista because she was claiming to be pregnant herself, which they believe is a sign she was hysterically jealous of Iris. They do not permit Iris to communicate with Laura.
In the present, the elderly Iris recalls going to see Aimee for the last time before Aimee died. Aimee is drunk and high, and she claims that Laura is her real mother and that her father is the man from The Blind Assassin. Frightened, Iris runs away. After Aimee dies, Winifred manages to win custody of Sabrina despite Iris’s best efforts to the contrary.
Back in the 1930s, Laura runs away from BellaVista, and Iris goes to see Reenie in Port Ticonderoga. Reenie tells Iris that Laura doesn’t want Iris to know where she is, but that she left a message for Iris before she was taken away. Iris manages to find the message, which is in the form of Laura painting over the pictures in Iris’s wedding album—but she struggles to understand what it means.
In The Blind Assassin, the man and woman meet in a cheap and grimy hotel. The man tells the woman about the Spanish Civil War, and then he mentions that a new war is about to begin. The woman makes a plan to leave her husband and live independently while waiting for the war to end. However, this never ends up happening—before long, she receives a telegram informing her that the man has been killed.
Laura calls Iris in May 1945, a week after World War II ends. They meet at a café, and Laura explains that she really was pregnant and that Richard and Winifred forced her to get an abortion at BellaVista. When Iris asks who the father was, Laura replies, “If you don’t already know, I don’t think I can tell you.” Laura indicates that Richard blackmailed her by threatening to harm Alex while he was in hiding, and Laura went along with it to protect him. Iris reveals that Alex was killed in the war and that she’d been having an affair with him. In response, Laura steals Iris’s handbag and car keys and drives away in her car. The next day, a police officer informs Iris that Laura drove the car off a bridge and died.
After Laura’s death, Iris finds Laura’s notebooks in her stocking. Reading them, she realizes that Richard had been raping Laura for years. She packs up her and Aimee’s things and leaves Richard a letter saying she knows what he did to Laura and that she never wants to see him again. She goes back to Port Ticonderoga, where she and Aimee proceed to lead a live a quiet life. In 1947, she publishes The Blind Assassin under Laura’s name. The scandal that ensues ends Richard’s political career, and when he calls to tell Iris this, she tells him that Laura had been having an affair with Alex. Shortly after, Richard kills himself, although Winifred makes sure it looks like an accident. Winifred then manages to gain custody of Sabrina.
At this point, Iris reveals that it was she—not Laura—who wrote The Blind Assassin, although there is an extent to which they wrote it together. Iris has written a second manuscript (the narrative of her and Laura’s life) in order to set the record straight, saying she wrote it for Sabrina.
Iris dies in May 1999. Shortly after, Sabrina comes back from living in India to sort through her grandmother’s belongings. Iris always dreamed that Sabrina would come before her death and that she would be able to tell Sabrina her story in person.
