The Handmaid's Tale: The iconic Sunday Times bestseller that inspired the hit TV series

Margaret Atwood

Apr 2019 · Vintage Digital · Narrated by Amy Landecker, Ann Dowd, Bradley Whitford, and Elisabeth Moss

54 reviews

Audiobook

11 hr 22 min

Unabridged

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About this audiobook

Shortlisted for Audiobook of the Year at the British Book Awards 2020.

Winner of Best Audiobook (Fiction) at the New York Festival Radio Awards 2020.

Read by Elisabeth Moss, star of the hit Channel 4 TV series.

** THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER **

Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon.

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford – her assigned name, Offred, means ‘of Fred’. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire.

As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs.

'A fantastic, chilling story. And so powerfully feminist' Bernadine Evaristo

‘As relevant today as it was when Atwood wrote it’ Guardian

©2011 O W Toad Ltd (P)2019 Penguin Audio

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Ratings and reviews

54 reviews

Sarah Easton

February 1, 2020

I love the book way more than the TV show. It flows alot nicer, you connect with the characters ALOT more. Everything just..impacts you more. Margaret Atwood's writing is not something that should be taken lightly. It's heavy, deep and beautiful. Can't wait to read Testaments.

2 people found this review helpful

David McGough

July 16, 2021

Wonderfully narrated by Elisabeth Moss - the book although a dystopian nightmarish view of the fate of women speaks to all trauma survivors like myself enduring a tortured & displaced life reduced to smaller function life fractured in pieces and love life & happiness lost in a very apocalyptic way. Margaret Atwood's book is full of beautiful poetic words "I Believe you into being" The book is drenched in heartbreaking grief over the life that was to what is - haunting intensely beautiful book.

Maria Corrigan

October 21, 2019

Great book. But you can't help hating men after you read it..lol

8 people found this review helpful

About the author

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid's Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and shared the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade. 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.

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