The Handmaid’s Tale

by Margaret Atwood

Recommended in 20 interviews and reading lists

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Who recommends it

1. The Best AudiobooksReading list

   The audiobook of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, narrated by Elisabeth Moss, is a perfect example of how audiobooks can enhance the listening experience.

2. The Best Dystopian BooksReading list

   Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the best dystopian books ever written. It’s a story about a future America that has been taken over by a totalitarian government. The government has stripped away all freedoms, and women are now nothing more than property.

3. Tim KasherInterview

   Whoa. These aren’t uplifting books, but I think I’d gift them The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Each book a masterpiece, they offer not only the horrors of humanity but also the indomitable strength of the human will.

4. MM McCabeInterview

   Also ran: A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. Wonderful, familiar account of that sense of being not quite entitled to anything, lurking round the outside of what my daughter calls the patriarchy (and for feminist books, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood goes a long way to nail what other more worthy texts…

5. Tyler KeevilInterview

   It’s hard to pick just one. Prime contenders would be The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Those were all on the high school curriculum in Canada, and each one just hit me so hard. That was where it really began for me. The characters…

6. The Best Classic Novels For BeginnersReading list

   This book has become a modern classic. While it’s not a horror novel, the first time I read it I had nightmares. Like a dystopian Hunger Games, it showed a possible future that was both scary and also seemingly very realistic. It was one of the first books that felt “political” to me, a book that made me want to be…

7. Rachel ParrisInterview

   Some books that I did read at that age were perfect for me, for a young woman. At school, we studied The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, so we had an early introduction to those themes – threat of the patriarchy, of nationalised religion and the surprisingly precarious position women are still in. It was a really…

8. Katie McGarryInterview
9. The Scariest Books Ever WrittenReading list

   I realise that Margaret Atwood would probably appreciate the ‘horror’ tag even less than that of ‘science fiction’, but if horror fiction is meant to scare, to disturb, to rattle the foundations of our being, this is the closest thing to a horror novel there is. The USA has become Gilead, a fundamentalist regime which…

10. Alison LittlewoodInterview

    I was inspired by watching the recent TV adaptation to pick up my old copy of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. It’s absolutely remarkable – one of those books that I read when I was quite young and didn’t appreciate as much as it deserved. In fact, I seem to remember reading it purely as a fantasy, one set in a…

11. Ramsey CampbellInterview

    Where do I start? Indeed, where do I stop? A few essentials… The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, a rich and radical piece of work. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, best read (or preferably reread) in the context of his letter about the book to Jonathan Cape, a magnificent exegesis. At Swim-Two-Birds by…

12. Nicole GallandInterview

    War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino, Anguished English by Richard Lederer, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, The Collected Plays of Samuel Beckett, The Idiot by Fyodor…

13. Helen PhillipsInterview

    I love both, and turn to both for similar reasons. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson makes me question everything I think I know, as does The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

14. Dawn TindleInterview

    Books about being kind to each other. Understanding differences and appreciating them, not using them to divide, blame or shame. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee comes to mind again. Or perhaps some distopian fiction – The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood or 1984 by George Orwell – would remind us of the slippery…

15. Gemma CorrellInterview

    The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, a dystopian novel about a gender-segregated America that reads like a cautionary tale in today’s political climate (as it did when it was written). “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”.

16. Meredith RussoInterview

    This is so hard! The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, I guess? My reasoning is, of course, ardently feminist.

17. Eileen CookInterview
18. The Best of the Booker PrizeReading list

    This is Atwood at her most formally ambitious, demonstrating that literary innovation and emotional engagement aren’t mutually exclusive. The novel meditates on memory, storytelling, sacrifice, and the lives of women across the 20th century. As the layers peel back, the reader’s understanding of everything that came…

19. A Brief History of Margaret AtwoodArticle

    This is a brief history of Margaret Atwood. Margaret Atwood is a world-renowned Canadian author and poet whose work has been translated into over 50 languages. She is best known for her novels, including “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Blind Assassin,” and “Oryx and Crake,” which have won numerous awards and have been…

20. Ashley StorrieInterview

    Margaret Atwood: I read Alias Grace when I was 14, I read The Handmaid’s Tale soon after and from that point on was a diehard Margaret Atwood fan. Years later I made a video called “If the Handmaid’s Tale was Scottish” Atwood saw it, liked it, retweeted it and quoted it at a conference. I wish I could tell 14-year-old…

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