The Handmaid’s Tale
by Margaret Atwood
America as a theocracy. The women who survive it.
For you if
you want to understand the logic of theocratic patriarchy from inside the experience of the women it controls
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A Canadian writer imagines the American near future: a theocratic regime called Gilead has replaced the United States, women have been stripped of all rights, and fertile women are assigned as handmaids to powerful men for reproductive purposes. Atwood wrote this in 1985, drawing on historical precedents — nothing in the novel, she has said, is something that hasn't been done to women somewhere. A visitor dispatch from a writer who looked at American religious politics and saw where they led.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Canada • North America
- Voice
- An outside perspective on Canada
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