The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one choice: reproduction. If she deviates from her purpose, she will end up, like all dissenters, hanging on the Wall, or sent to the Colonies, where she will find a slow and agonizing death from radiation. But even a totalitarian regime cannot eradicate desire – neither Offred's nor that of the two men on whom her fate depends. A brilliant, shocking dystopia about the evil lurking in human nature, THE HANDMAID'S TALE can be read as a dark chronicle of an alternative reality or as a poignant testimony to the position of women in the modern world.