Handmaiden's Tale
by Margaret Atwood

This is a fable of the near future. In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right ideals have been carried to extremes in a mono-theocratic government. The resulting society is a feminist’s nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids, who turn their offspring over to the “morally fit” Wives.

The tale is told by Offred (read: ‘of Fred’), a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells how the chilling society came to be