The Handmaid's Tale - (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics) by Margaret Atwood (Hardcover)

About the Book

It is the world of the near future, and Offred is a handmaid. She is hoping the commander makes her pregnant because she is only valued if her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she had a job of her own, a husband, and a child, but all of that is gone now.

Book Synopsis

One of the most powerful and most widely read novels of our time in display-worthy hardcover: A gripping vision of our society radically overturned by a theocratic revolution--from "the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction" (The New York Times)

The sixth and final season of the award-winning Hulu series starring Elisabeth Moss is now streaming

In Margaret Atwood's dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead's commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive.

Like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid's Tale has endured not only as a literary landmark but as a warning of a possible future that is still chillingly relevant.

With an introduction by Valerie Martin.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

Review Quotes

"A novel that brilliantly illuminates some of the darker interconnections between politics and sex.... Just as the world of Orwell's 1984 gripped our imaginations, so will the world of Atwood's handmaid!" --The Washington Post Book World

"The Handmaid's Tale deserves the highest praise." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Atwood takes many trends which exist today and stretches them to their logical and chilling conclusions.... An excellent novel about the directions our lives are taking.... Read it while it's still allowed." --Houston Chronicle

"Splendid." --Newsweek

About the Author

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, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade.

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.