> Skip to content
Read an extract
Play sample
  • Published: 15 September 2006
  • ISBN: 9781841593012
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 392
  • RRP: $39.99

The Handmaid's Tale

The iconic Sunday Times bestseller that inspired the hit TV series




'Compulsively readable' Daily Telegraph

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed . If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs. . . . .

  • Published: 15 September 2006
  • ISBN: 9781841593012
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 392
  • RRP: $39.99

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.

Also by Margaret Atwood

See all

Praise for The Handmaid's Tale

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

'Our 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

'Powerful...admirable' Robert Irwin, Time Out

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

Discover more

Article
Does your kid hate reading? Try these graphic novels for every age group

Graphic novels are the perfect way to get disinterested readers to pick up a book. Check out some of the best graphic novels for kids of all ages. 

Article
Meet our fearless female heroines

These female characters are brave, stand up for their beliefs and aren't afraid to break the status quo. 

Article
The Handmaid's Tale book club notes

Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon.

Article
The Handmaid’s Tale audiobook read by Elisabeth Moss

Elisabeth Moss, star of the hit TV show The Handmaid’s Tale, has narrated the audiobook edition of Margaret Atwood’s classic novel.