Other Sellers on Amazon
+ S$9.03 Delivery
Shipping rates and Return policy
The Handmaid's Tale Paperback â 1 April 1998
Amazon Price | New from | Used from |
Enhance your purchase
Look for The Testaments, the bestselling, award-winning the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale
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. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid's Tale is a modern classic.
Includes an introduction by Margaret Atwood
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication date1 April 1998
- Grade level9 and up
- Reading age14 - 18 years
- ISBN-10038549081X
- ISBN-13978-0385490818
- Lexile measure750L
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Product description
Review
"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
From the Back Cover
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable.
Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now....
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, "The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.
About the Author
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.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In the spring of 1984 I began to write a novel that was not initially called The Handmaid’s Tale. I wrote in long hand, mostly on yellow legal notepads, then transcribed my almost illegible scrawlings using a huge German-keyboard manual typewriter that I’d rented.
The keyboard was German because I was living in West Berlin, which was still encircled by the Berlin Wall: the Soviet empire was still strongly in place and was not to crumble for another five years. Every Sunday the East German air force made sonic booms to remind us of how close they were. During my visits to several countries behind the Iron Curtain—Czechoslovakia, East Germany—I experienced the wariness, the feeling of being spied on, the silences, the changes of subject, the oblique ways in which people might convey information, and these had an influence on what I was writing. So did the repurposed buildings. This used to belong to . . . But then they disappeared. I heard such stories many times.
Having been born in 1939 and come to consciousness during World War II, I knew that established orders could vanish overnight. Change could also be as fast as lightning. It can’t happen here could not be depended on: anything could happen anywhere, given the circumstances.
By 1984, I’d been avoiding my novel for a year or two. It seemed to me a risky venture. I’d read extensively in science fiction, speculative fiction, utopias and dystopias ever since my high school years in the 1950s, but I’d never written such a book. Was I up to it? The form was strewn with pitfalls, among them a tendency to sermonize, a veering into allegory, and a lack of plausibility. If I was to create an imaginary garden, I wanted the toads in it to be real. One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the “nightmare” of history, nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities. God is in the details, they say. So is the devil.
Back in 1984, the main premise seemed—even to me—fairly outrageous. Would I be able to persuade readers that the United States of America had suffered a coup that had transformed an erstwhile liberal democracy into a literal-minded theocratic dictatorship? In the book, the Constitution and Congress are no longer: the Republic of Gilead is built on a foundation of the seventeenth-century Puritan roots that have always lain beneath the modern-day America we thought we knew.
The immediate location of the book is Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of Harvard University, now a leading liberal educational institution but once a Puritan theological seminary. The Secret Service of Gilead is located in the Widener Library, where I had spent many hours in the stacks, researching my New England ancestors as well as the Salem witchcraft trials. Would some people be affronted by the use of the Harvard wall as a display area for the bodies of the executed? (They were.)
In the novel, the population is shrinking due to a toxic environment, and the ability to have viable babies is at a premium. (In today’s real world, studies in China are now showing a sharp fertility decline in Chinese men.) Under totalitarianisms—or indeed in any sharply hierarchical society—the ruling class monopolizes valuable things, so the elite of the regime arrange to have fertile females assigned to them as Handmaids. The biblical precedent is the story of Jacob and his two wives, Rachel and Leah, and their two handmaids. One man, four women, twelve sons—but the handmaids could not claim the sons. They belonged to the respective wives.
And so the tale unfolds.
Product details
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 038549081X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385490818
- Reading age : 14 - 18 years
- Best Sellers Rank: 5,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 66 in Science Fiction
- Customer reviews:
Customer reviews
Top reviews from other countries


If I had to use one word to describe this book it would be "terrifying". I simply loved it!

It took some time for me to start getting into the book because it is a style of writing that I'm not used to. There were a lot of time frame jumps, and because it's set in such a strange period I couldn't quite wrap my head around it, and therefore I ended up putting it down and reading The Hate U Give. But I picked it up again pretty quickly and I got used to the writing style.
I'm so glad that I did because it was a really good story.
I found the relationship between Offred and the Commander to be interesting. I don't want to go into too much detail here because I don't want to spoil it for anyone that hasn't read it but let's just say, it's interesting and the Commander definitely has some warped ideas.
I would have loved if the book had a clearer ending, but then again I understand why there wasn't a clear ending and I thought that was extremely clever! (Again I don't want to ruin it for anyone who hasn't yet read it).
I also really enjoyed how Offred developed and so to did her memories. It seems as though as she is growing more frustrated with what is happening, the more she looks back on what her life was like before with more scepticism.

I would recommend this book to everyone because it really relates to our current lives and although it was written in the 80s, there are still so many relevant factors even 40 years later!

Handmaidâs Tale by Margaret Atwood was in my TBR list since long. Thanks to one of online book club,I read recently and really amazed with it.
Plot:
As it is well-known fact that itâs a story set in distant future in dystopian USA. Countryâs President is killed and parliament has been dissolved. Army takes over charges of entire nation. It is not regular army but Republic of Gilead.Its totalitarian regime governed by men only.
Entire story is narrated by protagonist Offred through tape recordings.
Offred is Handmaid. She is thirty -three. Her only job is to breed. Offred is not her real name. In Gilead society, all the basic human rights and freedom from women is taken away. They become second citizens. They have been categorized into Wives and Daughters of Commanders,Handmaids,Marthas and Aunts. Their functions and clothes are fixed according to their category and strictly watched by Guardians. If they donât follow their duties, they are either hanged on wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness.
Story begins when Offred is newly posted in a commanderâs house. She lives with commander, his wife, two housemaids and driver of commander.
Offred continually remembers her past throughout the story. She has a husband, a five year old daughter, a mother and a best friend. What became of them, she does not know.
Handmaids are allowed to go for walk and grocery shopping once in a day in pair. Offred is paired with Offglen. At the begging both they pretend as real believers of Gilead but as time passes they realize they are haters. Offglen is belonged to underground network of rebels who help people to cross border and disappear.She eventually hangs herself.
As the story progress, commander asks Offred to spend some time with him during night in his cabin in his wifeâs absence. They talk,play scrabble and he asks for goodnight kiss. On the other hand, as Offred is not yet become pregnant,so commanderâs his wife asks Offred to conceive child through his driver, Nick. This one night stand turns into passionate affair with Nick. They are not in love but they make love every single night. But at the end, a black car of Guardians arrives at commanderâs house to take her away. So why she has been taken away? Who has made call to Guardians? What become of Offred eventually??
My Musings:
As story is set in dystopia, it is obviously disturbing read. But I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was quite comfortable read for me unlike Disgrace by J.MCotezee which was not even dystopian novel.
Handmaidâs Tale is considered as modern classic. But unlike other dystopian classics, this novel is narration driven rather than plot.
Margaret Atwood had fascination towards dystopian set-up since her early days. She has read and great fan of Orwellâs 1984, Bradburyâs Fahrenheit 451, Huxleyâs Brave New World to name a few.
Offred seems real character. She hates her present and wantsto escape but does not have courage. As she has only one job of breeding and she is being taken care of by housemaids, she has plenty of time to spare. So she observes her surrounding and takes notes in mind. She has sharp observation skills. She remembers each and every minor detail of her daily routine and memories from past. She makes love with Nick without guilt as she feels something humanly in it in that in-human world. She even tells her real name to Nick.
There are other characters but all are narrated through Offred. So we may not get their real persona. They might have come out as with different personalities if story would have been narrated in third person.
The strongest and best part about the whole book is flow of lyrical narration. Lyrics are sad yet beautiful. Once in a while,we come across such rhythmic narration in fiction.It never loses its pace for a moment during entire story.
Author has used so many fabulous illustrations ,metaphors to describe the pain and heaviness of situation.
For example:
âThe newspapers stories were like to dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How, awful, we would say ,and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic; they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. We were the people not in the papers. We lived in the blank pages at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.â (Page 89)
The only part I did not like is its open ending.Author let readers to imagine the ultimate fate of Offred.It would have been great,if we could know Offredâs destiny.
After reading this book I felt so grateful that I live in a world where such things are only on papers!
So grab this book if you want to witness dystopian painting of pain painted by one of the greatest artists alive today.