The Handmaid's Tale

Author's name: Margaret Atwood

A frightening vision of society radically transformed by a radical religious and political revolution, "The Handmaid's Tale" has become one of the world's most widely read novels and one of the most relevant and timely of its current issues. Offred is a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the mysterious "President" and his hot-tempered wife. She goes out once a day to the markets, where pictures have replaced all written signs, as women in Gilead are forbidden to read. She must pray that the President will make her pregnant. In her time, birth rates have plummeted to the point where children are rare in homes. A woman's value lies in her ability to bear children, and her failure means being sent to the colonies to clean up radioactive waste. Offred recalls the times she shared with her husband and daughter, and her job, before the revolution stripped her of even her real name. A novel that ranks alongside George Orwell's "1984" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," not only did it leave its mark on dystopian literature, but it also served as a warning of a possible future, the chills of which we now feel.