The Handmaid's Tale
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  • Published: 22 May 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784873189
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $24.00

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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The bestselling dystopian classic that became a cultural phenomenon and inspired an award-winning TV series

** THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER **

Go back to where it all began with the dystopian novel behind the award-winning TV series.

'As relevant today as it was when Atwood wrote it' Guardian

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.

'A fantastic, chilling story. And so powerfully feminist', Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other.

  • Published: 22 May 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784873189
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $24.00
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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
Paper Boat
The Testaments
Bodily Harm
Burning Questions
Old Babes in the Wood
Dearly
See all

Praise for The Handmaid's Tale

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

Angela Carter

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

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

Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday

Fiercely political and bleak, yet witting and wise...this novel seems ever more vital in the present day

Observer

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

Peter Kemp, Independent

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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.