The Handmaid's Tale

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

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

Angela Carter

It's hard to believe it is 25 years since it was first published, but its freshness, its anger and its disciplined, taut prose have grown more admirable in the intervening years... Atwood's novel was an ingenious enterprise that showed, with out hysteria, the real dangers to women of closing their eyes to patriarchal

Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday

Moving, vivid and terrifying. I only hope it's not prophetic

Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Listener

Fiercely political and bleak, yet witting and wise...this novel seems ever more vital in the present day

Observer

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

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

Peter Kemp, Independent

Powerful...admirable

Robert Irwin, Time Out

It's hard to believe it is 25 years since it was first published, but its freshness, its anger and its disciplined, taut prose have grown more admirable in the intervening years... Atwood's novel was an ingenious enterprise that showed, with out hysteria, the real dangers to women of closing their eyes to patriarchal oppression

Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday

Turned 25 this year and...worth re-reading. As you grow, such books grow with you

Erica Wagner, The Times, Christmas round up

Fiercely political and bleak, yet witting and wise...this novel seems ever more vital in the present day

Observer

Compulsively readable

Daily Telegraph

The mother of all feminist dystopian novels.

Sarra Manning, Red

The novel satirises the strain of evangelical puritanism in American culture and the objectification and control of women’s bodies. It is more broadly a contemporary myth of despotic power, and how such power deforms those who are subjected to it.

Tim Adams, Observer

It's mesmerising, compelling and considered one of her best.

Jennifer McShane, Image Magazine

One of Atwood’s finest pieces of work serves as a great reminder of what humanity is capable of.

Hannah Dunn, Red

Margaret Atwood is a wry and perceptive observer of society as well as an original storyteller

Cecilia Heyes, Psychologist

Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of twenty-first century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit and astute perception

Essence

A fantastic, chilling story. And so powerfully feminist

Bernadine Evaristo, author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

A contemporary classic… the book serves as a chilling reminder of what women have experienced

Independent