The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood, Margaret

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from "the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction" (The New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss.

Look for The Testaments, the bestselling, award-winning the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale

In Margaret Atwood's dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead's commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid's Tale is a modern classic.

Includes an introduction by Margaret Atwood

Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 03/16/1998
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.10w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780385490818
Age Range: 14-18

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 5.4
Point Value: 14
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 8109 / Handmaid's Tale


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 01/01/2001 pg. 976
Entertainment Weekly 06/27/2008 pg. 98
Entertainment Weekly 07/09/2010 pg. 81
Entertainment Weekly 06/28/2013 pg. 28
Entertainment Weekly 07/05/2013 pg. 98

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 won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade.

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.