The Handmaid's Tale (New Windmills) [Hardcover]

'Compulsively readable' --Daily Telegraph

"Fiercely political and bleak, yet witting and wise [...] this novel seems ever more vital in the present day" --Observer- The New Review

'...25 years since it was first published, but its freshness, its anger and its disciplined, taut prose have grown more admirable...' --The Independent on Sunday

'The images of brilliant emptiness are one of the most striking aspects of this novel about totalltarian blindness...the effect is chilling' --Linda Taylor, Sunday Times

'Moving, vivid and terrifying. I only hope it's not prophetic' --Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Listener --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

'The Handmaid's Tale is both a superlative exercise in science fiction and a profoundly felt moral story' Angela Carter 'Out of a narrative shadowed by terror, glam sharp perceptions, brilliant intense images and sardonic wit' Peter Kemp, Independent 'The images of brilliant emptiness are one of the most striking aspects of this novel about totalitarian blindness...the effect is chilling' Sunday Times 'Compulsively readable' Daily Telegraph --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

A special celebratory edition to mark the 21st birthday of Vintage books. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

One of the New Windmills series for schools, this is the story of Offred, one of the few women in the Republic of Gilead left with functioning ovaries, whose only function it is to breed. If she deviates, she will be hanged as a dissenter. But Offred is determined to find a way out.

'Compulsively readable' Daily Telegraph
--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

'Out of a narrative shadowed by terror, gleam sharp perceptions, brilliant intense images and sardonic wit' Independent

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one option: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like all dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs. The Handmaid's Tale is a brilliant and astutely perceived evocation of twenty-first-century America.

It's Vintage's 21st birthday and we're celebrating by publishing twenty-one of our

most iconic books in a rainbow of beautiful colours. Treat yourself and make

your bookshelves happy.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. In addition to the classic The Handmaid's Tale, her novels include Cat's Eye, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy, The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize, and Oryx and Crake, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003. Her latest novel, The Year of the Flood, is published by Bloomsbury in September 2009. She was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature in 2008. Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto, Canada. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.