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  • Published: 26 March 2019
  • ISBN: 9781473571624
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

The Handmaid's Tale




This stunning graphic edition brings Margaret Atwood's terrifying modern classic to vivid life like never before

Provocative, startling, prophetic, and more relevant than ever, The Handmaid's Tale has become a global phenomenon. Now, in this stunning graphic novel edition of Margaret Atwood's modern classic, the terrifying reality of Gilead is brought to vivid life like never before.

"Everything Handmaids wear is red: the colour of blood, which defines us." Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships. She serves in the household of the Commander and his wife, and under the new social order she has only one purpose: once a month, she must lie on her back and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, ecause in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if they are fertile. But Offred remembers the years before Gilead, when she was an independent woman who had a job, a family, and a name of her own. Now, her memories and her will to survive are acts of rebellion.

The Handmaid's Tale and its iconic images - the red of the Handmaids, the blue of the Wives, the looming Gileadean Eye - have been adapted into a film, an opera, a ballet, and multi-award-winning TV series. This groundbreaking new graphic novel edition, adapted and featuring arresting artwork by Renée Nault, is destined to become a classic in its own right.

  • Published: 26 March 2019
  • ISBN: 9781473571624
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240

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.

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Praise for The Handmaid's Tale

Atwood takes us into a modern Orwellian nightmare… This haunting novel now seems scarily prophetic. Bleakly compelling and chilling, but with a redemptive twist.

Rebecca Wallersteiner, Lady

Four years in the making, this graphic novelisation by Atwood's fellow Canadian, illustrator Renée Nault, is strikingly visualised.

Bookseller

Whatever one’s level of Gileadean connoisseurship (or ignorance), this version, superbly adapted and illustrated in ink and watercolour is an excellent addition to the formats.

Strong Words

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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.