"Brilliantly illuminates some of the darker interconnections between politics and sex." --The Washington Post

"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." --Houston Chronicle "Splendid." --Newsweek

#1 New York Times bestseller &; Includes an introduction by Margaret Atwood. An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from &;the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction&; (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. Look for The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid&;s Tale, available now. 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.

Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid&;s Tale, her novels include Cat&;s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; Oryx and Crake, short-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize; The Year of the Flood; MaddAddam; and her most recent, The Heart Goes Last. She is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Innovator&;s Award, and lives in Toronto with the writer Graeme Gibson. www.margaretatwood.ca