Editions

The Handmaid's Tale

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9781784873189

  • Length: 336  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 234g

  • RRP: £8.99

The Handmaid's Tale

** THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER **

Discover the dystopian novel behind the award-winning TV series before you read the 2019 Booker Prize-winning sequel The Testaments

‘I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.’

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.

'As relevant today as it was when Atwood wrote it…no television event has hit such a nerve …’ Guardian

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

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9781784873189

  • Length: 336  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 234g

  • RRP: £8.99

Reviews

  • Compulsively readable

    Daily Telegraph

  • The mother of all feminist dystopian novels.

    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.

    Observer

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

    Red

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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, 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.

Margaret Atwood

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Competitions

Win a collection of Margaret Atwood's best-loved books for her 80th birthday
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Competitions

Could you be the first person to read The Testaments?
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Features

Margaret Atwood: 'The Handmaid's Tale is being read very differently now'

Since The Handmaid’s Tale hit TV screens in 2017, Margaret Atwood’s already-prominent profile as a feminist has blazed ever brighter. Here she talks about how the novel came to fruition while she was living in Berlin, speaking up and what’s next for feminism. The sequel to the book The Testaments will publish 2019.

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