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Ironically, Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale around 1984. Indeed, it is commonly known that her novel depicts an Orwellian dystopia, as seen through the eyes of Offred, a handmaid. This term should not be understood in the ordinary meaning of the word (i.e., a domestic worker), but in the biblical sense, cf. the tale of Hagar (Genesis, chap. 16) or Zilpah and Bilhah (Genesis, chap. 29 sqq.). The novel contains many such subtle biblical references (Gilead, Jezebel). The handmaid, then, is a slave-woman with a gestational surrogacy role, whose sole value is her uterus. Offred’s story takes place in an authoritarian society � the U.S. turned into a totalitarian regime, where infertility is widespread, and men have the upper hand. In a nutshell: a nightmarish theocracy.

Every event in the story is seen through Offred’s eyes. Her claustrophobic world, her oppressive routine, everything in her life is fastidiously described in the form of a diary or stream of consciousness: the household, the neighborhood around the house, the people she carefully meets, her room, her dreams, her recollection of how she came to be there� Then, around the middle of the novel, some small changes (often sexually loaded) start to take place and slowly build up until, eventually, her horrific environment starts to crumble. The ending is somewhat abrupt.

Margaret Atwood’s major tour de force is indeed to make the reader dive right into the character’s perspective, without the expected exposition that would explain what this “sci-fi� world is about and how it came to be this way. In fact, all the explanatory parts are pushed back at the end of the book, in the surprising metafictional keynote entitled Historical Notes � a narrative device Atwood borrowed from 1984’s Appendix. In so doing, we are left somewhat clueless, guessing at every page. In so doing, the author manages, with a remarkable economy of means, a neutral voice, a lack of spectacular effects, to build an incredible sense of tension and anxiety.

In the end, Atwood's representation of an iron-fisted, misogynistic world is so appalling that it seems implausible and revolting. Yet, the author has repeatedly stressed that, as a self-imposed rule, she has refused to make up any of the details in her work. Every injustice, every abuse, every pain inflicted on women actually took place (and sadly still does) at some point or other of human history.

Edit: The Hulu TV show, based on Atwood’s barbaric dystopia, is a graphic, breathtaking, and incredibly absorbing adaptation. This is thanks to the excellent actors� performance and the Bergmanian style of the film, which (as far as the first season goes) remains faithful to the novel while expanding on the plot and characters. The use of explanatory flashbacks dispels most of the confusion the audience might have had while reading the book; yet confusion is at the very heart of Atwood’s work. The following seasons further elaborate on the plot, beyond the boundaries of the novel. The Testaments is Atwood’s own sequel to her book, written more than thirty years later.