The Handmaid’s Tale (Censorship (Ready Reference series))
At a glance:
- Author: Margaret Atwood
- First Published: 1985
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Dystopian fiction, Near future and distant future fiction
- Subjects: Dictators, Freedom, United States or Americans, Power, personal or social, Sexism, Sex or sexuality, Gender roles, Self, Slavery or slaves, Revolutions, Future, Twenty-first century, Prostitution or prostitutes, Religion, Feminism, Oppression, Women, Conservatism, Infertility, Childbirth, Totalitarianism, Women’s rights
- Locales: Gilead
The Work
Among the most frequently banned books of the 1990’s, The Handmaid’s Tale won Canada’s most prestigious award for fiction, the Governor General’s Literary Award. The novel is narrated by a woman known as Offred (Of Fred), a “Handmaid” to a Commander and the Commander’s Wife in the fictional Republic of Gilead. As Offred describes events in her highly controlled life, she recalls times before religious fundamentalists assumed political control, a period when she was a wife, mother, and librarian.
Complaints about The Handmaid’s Tale,...
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