The Handmaid's Tale
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  • Published: 7 October 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099511663
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $23.00

The Handmaid's Tale

Formats & editions
Paperback
22 May 2017
Paperback
7 Oct 2010
Paperback
25 Oct 1996
Hardback
16 Jul 2024
Hardback
2 Apr 2019
EBook
26 Mar 2019
EBook
26 Mar 2019
EBook
15 May 2012
Audiobook
30 Apr 2019
Paperback
3 Oct 2016
Hardback
15 Sep 2006
Audio CD
7 May 2019
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'Compulsively readable' Daily Telegraph

** THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER **

Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon.

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead. 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.

'A fantastic, chilling story. And so powerfully feminist' Bernadine Evaristo

‘As relevant today as it was when Atwood wrote it’ Guardian
  • Published: 7 October 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099511663
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $23.00
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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 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.

portrait photo of Margaret Atwood

Also by Margaret Atwood

Freedom
The Testaments
Bodily Harm
Burning Questions
Dearly
Paper Boat
Old Babes in the Wood
See all

Praise for The Handmaid's Tale

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

Peter Kemp, Independent

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

Angela Carter

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

Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Listener

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

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

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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.