I do not only love this book because I am a woman. I don't only love it because its prescience astounds me. More than a seminal feminist work, it is a narrative of widespread oppression. It gives voice to any person deprived of personhood by the politics of sex. As bill after bill is brought before congress legislating the proper use of mine and others' bodies, I hand this book to you and ask that you read it with your future and your children's futures in mind. We live in extremely dangerous times. How will you live through them? When you cannot choose how to use your own body, how will you find agency?
— SarahFeatured title on PBS's The Great American Read in 2018
Audie Award, Fiction, 2013
Margaret Atwood's popular dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale explores a broad range of issues relating to power, gender, and religious politics. Multiple Emmy and Golden Globe award-winner Claire Danes (Temple Grandin, Homeland) gives a stirring performance of this classic in speculative fiction, one of the most powerful and widely read novels of our time.
After a staged terrorist attack kills the President and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred, now a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Despite the danger, Offred learns to navigate the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules in hopes of ending this oppression.
The Handmaid's Tale is part of Audible's A-List Collection, featuring the world's most celebrated actors narrating distinguished works of literature that each star had a hand in selecting.