«The images of brilliant emptiness are one of the most striking aspects of this novel about totalitarian blindness...the effect is chilling»

Linda Taylor, Sunday Times

«Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of twenty-first century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit and astute perception»

Essence

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

Peter Kemp, Independent

«Margaret Atwood is a wry and perceptive observer of society as well as an original storyteller»

Psychologist

«Compulsively readable»

Daily Telegraph

«It's hard to believe it is 25 years since it was first published, but its freshness, its anger and its disciplined, taut prose have grown more admirable in the intervening years... Atwood's novel was an ingenious enterprise that showed, with out hysteria, the real dangers to women of closing their eyes to patriarchal»

Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday

«A fantastic, chilling story. And so powerfully feminist»

Bernadine Evaristo

«The mother of all feminist dystopian novels»

Red

«The novel satirises the strain of evangelical puritanism in American culture and the objectification and control of women's bodies. It is more broadly a contemporary myth of despotic power, and how such power deforms those who are subjected to it»

Observer

«The Handmaid's Tale is both a superlative exercise in science fiction and a profoundly felt moral story»

Angela Carter