Published: 1 December 2010
ISBN: 9780099511663
Imprint: Vintage Classics
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
RRP: $14.99

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The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood

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'Compulsively readable' Daily Telegraph

** THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER **Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon before you read the Booker Prize-winning sequel The Testaments.NOW AN AWARD-WINNING TV SERIES STARRING ELISABETH MOSS

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' Bernadine Evaristo, author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

'This novel seems ever more vital in the present day' Observer

READ THE TESTAMENTS, THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING SEQUEL TO THE HANDMAID'S TALE, TODAY

Published: 1 December 2010
ISBN: 9780099511663
Imprint: Vintage Classics
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
RRP: $14.99

Categories:

Share…

About the author

Margaret Atwood

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, went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump, when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against the disempowerment of women, and with the 2017 release of the award-winning Channel 4 TV series. Its sequel, The Testaments, was published in 2019 and was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize.

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 and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. 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.

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Praise for The Handmaid's Tale

Moving, vivid and terrifying. I only hope it's not prophetic
Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Listener

The Handmaid's Tale is both a superlative exercise in science fiction and a profoundly felt moral story
Angela Carter

Out of a narrative shadowed by terror, gleam sharp perceptions, brilliant intense images and sardonic wit
Peter Kemp, Independent

The images of brilliant emptiness are one of the most striking aspects of this novel about totalitarian blindness...the effect is chilling
Linda Taylor, Sunday Times