The Handmaid’s Tale
ATWOOD, Margaret.
The Handmaid’s Tale. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
8vo, pp. [8], 311, [1]; a fine copy in a fine, un-priceclipped jacket (some very light toning), with the original publisher’s postcard (reproducing the jacket) laid in; small Doubleday sticker to rear cover.
First American edition of Atwood’s award-winning theocratic dystopia, preceded only by the Canadian edition.
‘Set in the near future, [The Handmaid’s Tale] describes life in what was once the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men of its population. The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment’s calm façade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusions’ (blurb).
Sargent, p. 426.