In which country was the novel first published?

The Handmaid's Tale was first published in Canada. Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel appeared in 1985 through the Canadian publisher McClelland and Stewart, before becoming an international bestseller and a major work of speculative fiction.

Atwood was born in Ottawa and is a Canadian author, and the book's Canadian publication is part of its literary identity. Its setting, however, is the fictional Republic of Gilead, formed in what had been the United States. That difference often causes confusion: the novel is Canadian in authorship and first publication, but its story is primarily set in a transformed New England.

The book was released on April 17, 1985, and won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction that year. It later received the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. The novel has since been adapted into a film, an opera, and a television series, and Atwood published the sequel The Testaments in 2019.