In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic state is called Gilead.
Gilead is a totalitarian regime that replaces the United States after a coup. Its rulers interpret selected biblical passages as political law and organize society into rigid classes. Fertile women assigned as Handmaids are forced to bear children for elite couples who are unable to conceive.
The narrator is known by the patronymic name Offred, meaning she belongs to a Commander called Fred. Names, clothing, movement, literacy, and employment are all controlled, showing how Gilead turns identity into an instrument of power.
Atwood published the novel in 1985. She said its events were influenced by historical practices rather than invented from nothing, including authoritarian governments, reproductive control, and restrictions on women’s rights. Gilead is sometimes confused with Panem, the state in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, but the two novels use different political systems and settings.