85Dystopian fiction
Pick it up if you want a classic dystopia told from the inside, in one woman's voice.
Before you read
In the Republic of Gilead, a woman assigned to a commander's household recalls the life she had before.
No plot outcomes, twists, or ending details appear in this version.
Spoiler-free reading guide
In the near future, a coup has turned part of the United States into the Republic of Gilead, a strict religious regime. Fertility has fallen sharply, and the state assigns fertile women, called Handmaids, to the households of powerful men to bear children for them.
Offred is one of these women. She narrates her daily life under rules that control what she wears, where she goes and what she can say, and she remembers her husband, her daughter and a friend from before. Margaret Atwood published the novel in 1985, and it won the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987.
It is a good fit for readers of dystopian fiction, for those who know the television adaptation and want the original, and for book clubs interested in politics, gender and power. It includes sexual violence and oppression, handled mostly through implication, so it can be difficult.
Offred's voice is intimate and dry, and the story moves between the present and her memories. The book is just over 300 pages and divided into short sections with titles such as Night. A brief closing chapter, the Historical Notes, changes how you see everything before it, so do not skip it.
Control of the body. Gilead regulates women's bodies and choices, and the novel traces how that control is justified.
Language. Offred's thoughts, the names people use and the phrases they are told to repeat show how words are used to shape what people can think.
Complicity and resistance. The book looks at the ways ordinary people go along, adapt and sometimes push back.
Offred is the narrator, a Handmaid whose real name is not given. The Commander is the official in whose house she lives. Serena Joy is his wife, a former television personality who now controls the household. Nick is a driver who works for the Commander. Ofglen is Offred's walking partner, Moira is her rebellious friend from before Gilead, and Aunt Lydia is one of the women who train the Handmaids.
Margaret Atwood began writing the novel in West Berlin in 1984, and it was published in 1985. She has said that nothing in it is without precedent in real history, which is part of why it feels so plausible. A film followed in 1990 and the television series The Handmaid's Tale began in 2017. The novel is regularly included in school curricula and often appears on lists of books people try to ban, which has kept it in public discussion.
The Testaments is Atwood's sequel, set fifteen years later. For other classic dystopias, try 1984 by George Orwell or Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.