The Handmaid’s Tale

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Shortlisted for Audiobook of the Year at the British Book Awards 2020.

Winner of Best Audiobook (Fiction) at the New York Festival Radio Awards 2020.

Read by Elisabeth Moss, star of the hit Channel 4 TV series.

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

"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.

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

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


©2011 O W Toad Ltd (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

A fantastic, chilling story. And so powerfully feminist

Bernadine Evaristo, author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

Compulsively readable

Daily Telegraph

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

Independent

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

Angela Carter

Moving, vivid and terrifying. I only hope it’s not prophetic

The Listener

The images of brilliant emptiness are one of the most striking aspects of this novel about totalitarian blindness…the effect is chilling

Sunday Times

Powerful…admirable

Time Out

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 oppression

Independent on Sunday

Turned 25 this year and…worth re-reading. As you grow, such books grow with you

The Times, Christmas round up

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

Observer

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