'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman
Hugo and Nebula winner, and one of the most reprinted SF stories ever written — the genre's definitive fable of civil disobedience.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
What is The Handmaid's Tale about?
In the Republic of Gilead — formerly the United States, after the coup that followed the fertility collapse — Offred ('of Fred': the name is an ownership tag) serves as a Handmaid, her viable ovaries state property, her monthly Ceremony scripture-sanctioned rape, her memories of a husband, a daughter and a job the contraband she lives on. Atwood wrote it in West Berlin with a rule: nothing without historical precedent, every atrocity already on humanity's record somewhere. The closing 'Historical Notes' — a smug academic conference, centuries on, debating her tape's authenticity — adds the final twist of the knife: even survival gets footnoted by men.
Why it matters
Governor General's Award winner, first-ever Arthur C. Clarke Award winner, and the most politically active novel of the present day — its red-and-white costume now a global protest uniform; the Emmy-sweeping 2017 series and Booker-winning sequel The Testaments extended its reach further still.
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Read next
Animal Farm
The most effective political allegory in the language, permanently in print and on syllabuses worldwide; with Nineteen Eighty-Four it made Orwell's name an adjective.
Barrayar
Hugo winner (1992) — one of Bujold's record-equalling four — and the series' emotional foundation: Miles's entire story is this book's consequences.