The Handmaid's Tale: The iconic Sunday Times bestseller that inspired the hit TV series

Margaret Atwood

May 2012 · Random House

About this ebook

** THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER **

Go back to where it all began with the dystopian novel behind the award-winning TV series.

'As relevant today as it was when Atwood wrote it' Guardian

I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state in what was formerly known as the United States. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford - her assigned name, Offred, means 'of Fred'. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs.

Masterfully conceived and executed, this haunting vision of the future places Margaret Atwood at the forefront of dystopian fiction.

'A fantastic, chilling story. And so powerfully feminist', Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other.

Ratings and reviews

My goodness, what a tale. Hard work to read due to its dark content that seems not far off from what our future might look like. Very well written though, in a haunting style that shows the state of mind of someone from whom everything has been taken, who has hardly any hope left and whose mind has been and is being manipulated through various means. Not a brave heroin. Maybe an ordinary person, like most of us. My first Atwoord read. Now i will read the Testaments and am looking forward to it as both an ordeal and a treat.

If you want a horror story with roots in reality, there's none more subtle and scarier than this one. With frightening twists, deep truths and poetic language, this one is the book you will be thinking about for a very long time. All women should read this at least once I swear. It's an eye-opener and makes you care more about women's rights in this world (because you sure as hell don't want things to get as bad as the world in this book).

First read it for a level and only after rereading it 10 years later did I fully appreciate it's power. In light of more modern sexual acceptance I can see it's becoming less powerful in our more "enlightened" society however in our clamour for equality and events in America I would argue that it still carries a lesson/ warning.

About the author

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid's Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and shared the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade; in 2022 Burning Questions, a collection of essays, was a Sunday Times bestseller; and in 2023, Old Babes in the Wood, a collection of short stories, was a number one Sunday Times bestseller.

Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.