The Handmaid's Tale
1985
- brothels
- canadian authors
- canadian fantasy fiction
- canadian fiction (fictional works by one author)
- christian fundamentalism
- dystopian fiction
- dystopias
- fantasy fiction
- fiction
- fiction, dystopian
The story
The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England, in a strongly patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state, known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. The central character and narrator is a woman named Offred, one of the group known as "handmaids", who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "commanders" — the ruling class of men in Gilead. The novel explores themes of subjugated women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, and the various means by which they resist and attempt to gain individuality and independence. The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987; it was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. ---------- Also contained in: [Novels](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24301311W)
What it’s like
Cool, muted greys and washed-out greens dominate, with the red of the handmaids' cloaks and wimples standing out like a warning against a flat, overcast landscape. The prose is spare and first-person, a woman's clipped, watchful voice that drifts between present-tense unease and fragmented memory, with quiet domestic details (a bedroom's narrow bed, the scrape of a chair, the ritual of a grocery walk) carrying a steady, oppressive weight. Reading it feels like sitting in a stifled room with the windows closed: a slow, claustrophobic dread that builds through small observations rather than action. Violence is present but mostly implied or reported, with occasional brief, stark moments of cruelty and punishment; there is no graphic gore, though there are frank references to sexual coercion and bodily control that land heavily. Best suited to a rainy afternoon or late-night reading when you want something bleak, thoughtful, and sharply political. It fits readers who want dystopia with psychological depth and a lingering, resistant hope rather than escapism or lightness.
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