Product Description

'Compulsively readable' Daily Telegraph

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #686 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Synopsis
The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs...

From the Publisher
'Compulsively readable' Daily Telegraph

About the Author
Margaret Atwood is Canada’s most eminent novelist, poet and critic. Her books include The Edible Woman, Surfacing, Lady Oracle, Alias Grace, Cat’s Eye, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize and The Handmaid’s Tale, which won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction and the Governor-General’s Award, was short-listed for the Booker Prize and made into a major film. She lives in Toronto with the writer Graeme Gibson and their daughter.

Customer Reviews

It doesn't matter what you feel, it only matters how you behave
What a wonderful book, written in the style of 1984 and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never let me go. I find Margaret Atwood's books hard to put down once I have started them, and cannot believe I only discovered her this year. I didn't read the notes at the end, as I thought they would ruin the chilling atmosphere set by the rest of the book. Moira is one of the best characters for me; she brings a little humour to the situation which is sorely needed. A great read.

How to do theocratic dystopia...
A truly great book, particular for those who have cold feet about Speculative Fiction (aka Sci Fi). A post-apocalyptic take on loss, resistance, feminism and social order of the patriarchal kind, The Handmaid's Tale avoids both cliche and the pretensions that can often plague even the best of novels with political undertows. I can think of few books which so well capture the sense of radical transformation and dislocation that must come with what someone once called the 'orgasms of history', those decisive events that change utterly social structures and somehow drag individuals along with them, even though people remain dominated by much the same loves and hopes they always were. The evocations of ritual, ceremony and punishment are particularly disturbing and resonant, even viscerally so. And, despite creating a deeply believable metaphor both for those changes that have been and those yet to come, Atwood also accomplishes the 'page turner' quality usually reserved for shallow thrillers. Just shy of being a masterpiece.

Love this book!
I read this novel for the first time last week and I loved it!! I couldn't put it down!!