After a coup topples the United States government, a fundamentalist regime called Gilead takes power in New England. With birth rates collapsing, the few women still able to conceive are assigned as Handmaids to high-ranking Commanders and their wives, stripped of their names, property and right to read. The narrator, known only as Offred, is one of them.
Offred recounts her daily routine of shopping trips, rituals and surveillance in the household of a Commander and his wife Serena Joy, interleaved with memories of her former life with a husband and daughter. Small risks, from forbidden games of Scrabble to whispered contact with other women, hint at resistance, and a chauffeur named Nick complicates her sense of who can be trusted.
Atwood said she included nothing that had not already happened somewhere in history, which gives the book its chill. Its restrained, intimate first-person voice makes the horror feel personal rather than abstract. Winner of the Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award, it gained a vast new audience through the television series, and red handmaid robes became a protest symbol.
Book details
| Author | Margaret Atwood |
|---|---|
| First published | 1985 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 311 |
| Setting | Gilead, a theocracy in the former United States, around Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Awards | Governor General's Award for English-language fiction 1985, Arthur C. Clarke Award 1987 |
Themes
- Reproductive control
- Religious authoritarianism
- Gender oppression
- Resistance
- Memory
Who should read it
Readers who want a gripping dystopia about women's rights, power and complicity.