Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale was first published in 1985.
The novel appeared during a period when debates about reproductive rights, religious conservatism, and women's legal status were prominent in North America. Atwood set the story in the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic regime formed in what had been the United States. The narrator, Offred, describes life under a system that assigns women tightly controlled social roles.
The book became one of Atwood's best-known works and won the 1985 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction. It was also nominated for the 1986 Booker Prize. The first publication date is sometimes confused with dates connected to later adaptations, especially the television series, which premiered in 2017.
Atwood has explained that the novel's events were based on historical practices rather than entirely invented forms of oppression. That context helps explain why the book is often discussed as speculative fiction as well as dystopian literature. Its sequel, The Testaments, was published in 2019.