The Handmaid's Tale

· Vintage Digital · Narrated by Amy Landecker, Ann Dowd, Bradley Whitford and Elisabeth Moss
4.6
44 reviews
Audiobook
11 hr 22 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook

Brought to you by Penguin.

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.

Go back to where it all began with the dystopian novel behind the award-winning TV series.

"I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light."

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state in what was formerly known as the United States. 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.

Masterfully conceived and executed, this haunting vision of the future places Margaret Atwood at the forefront of dystopian fiction.

'As relevant today as it was when Atwood wrote it' Guardian

'A fantastic, chilling story. And so powerfully feminist', Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other.


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

Ratings and reviews

4.6
44 reviews
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.
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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
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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
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About the author

Margaret Atwood (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 went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump, when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against him; and the 2017 release of the award-winning Channel 4 TV series. Sales of the English language edition have now topped 8 million copies worldwide.

Atwood has won numerous awards including the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

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