Which fiction prize did the novel win in 1986?

The novel won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction in 1986.

The award recognized Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as the year’s winning work in the Los Angeles Times fiction category. The prize added an important mainstream literary honor to a book that was also being discussed as dystopian and science fiction.

The novel, published in 1985, imagines the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic regime that strips women of legal, economic, and bodily autonomy. Its narrator, Offred, is forced into the role of Handmaid, while the surrounding system divides women into rigid categories such as Wives, Marthas, and Aunts.

This award is easy to confuse with the Booker Prize or the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The Handmaid’s Tale was shortlisted for the 1986 Booker Prize and nominated for the 1986 Nebula, but it did not win those prizes. Its other major early wins included the 1985 Governor General’s Award and the inaugural 1987 Arthur C. Clarke Award.