Engagement:
Genre:
Dystopian
Published:
1985
Page Count:
311
Where to Buy:
The Handmaid's Tale
#
Content Ratings
Intense Themes
The novel is a sustained depiction of state-sponsored sexual slavery, the systematic erasure of women's identity, reproductive coercion, the psychological damage of sustained subjugation, and the complicity of ordinary people in oppressive systems.
Moderate Violence
The ritualized rape ceremony, public executions by hanging, the mutilation and display of executed dissidents, and beatings are depicted; violence is systemic and used as an instrument of political control.
Synopsis
In the near-future theocratic Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian state built on the violent suppression of women following an environmental fertility crisis, Offred serves as a Handmaid—a fertile woman forced into monthly ritualized rape for the benefit of the ruling class—and narrates her daily subjugation, her memories of freedom, and her small, dangerous acts of resistance. A foundational feminist dystopian novel of extraordinary power. One of the most important novels of the twentieth century.