The Handmaid's Tale (Graphic Novel): A Novel

The stunning graphic novel adaptation • A must-read and collector’s item for fans of “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times).

Look for The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive.

Provocative, startling, prophetic, The Handmaid’s Tale has long been a global phenomenon. With this beautiful graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s modern classic, beautifully realized by artist Renée Nault, the terrifying reality of Gilead has been brought to vivid life like never before.

A worthy adaptation of a legendary and award-winning novel. A tyrannical religious regime has overthrown the U.S. government and reconfigured human roles and identities to severely oppress women, the LGTBQ community, and other marginalized groups. Offred is a handmaid owned by the government for the sole purpose of procreation in a country of widespread infertility. Her existence is a fragile one-a wrong move or a reckless word, and she could be obliterated. Her only escape is her memory, which remains intact and full of scenes from the way her world used to be. She had a career, a husband, and a daughter, and nothing can take those truths from her. Nault's illustrations are haunting and delicately ethereal. It's almost guilt inducing to be so captivated by the beauty of her art, so effectively does it depict the horror of Offred's experiences. At times following the narrative word for word and other times expanding the plot to portray deeper themes of fear, determined resistance, and the complicity of the public, each frame melds with the text until neither can exist without the other. VERDICT A must-read; fans of Atwood, graphic novels, and the TV show adaptation will be particularly invested.-Michael Marie Jacobs, Darlington School, GAα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

“Gorgeous.”
―io9
 
“Arresting . . . Able to convey some things that text—and even a TV show—never could.”
―The New York Post

“A rich, visceral approach to telling the story.”
―Toronto Star
 
“Nault spectacularly transforms lines and color into fear, resignation, desperation, the tiniest glimmers of hope . . . most piercing throughout are her affecting use of color (red—'the colour of blood'—and its portentous hues of orange, crimson, rust) and scale (the indistinguishable handmaids trapped in plain sight). She adds softness when Offred recalls her past, with less-saturated colors for happier memories, thickened, darker lines for the repetitive nightmares.”
―Booklist, starred review

"Nault spectacularly transforms lines and color into fear, resignation, desperation, and the tiniest glimmers of hope."
―Publishers Weekly, starred review

"[Y]ou owe it to yourself to check out Renée Nault's take on the classic dystopian story."
―Bustle

“There is magic in every detail of Ms. Nault’s adaptation, thoughtfulness in each panel, an intentionality about every aspect of it, the costuming, the sets and her interpretation of Gileadean iconography is stark, sometimes shocking and beautifully rendered.”
―Good Men Project
 
“There’s something about Renee Nault’s art that makes the reader feel both closer to the action and completely, terrifyingly, alone . . . This is the power of graphic novels―the ability to add that extra emotional pull to an already strong story.”
―The Geekiary

“This is great comics. If you agree that the most basic definition of comics is a fluid dance between words and pictures, you will very likely be struck by the beauty of this book . . . What Nault has done here is stunning.”
―Seattle Review of Books

"Haunting . . . Impossible to look away from."
―The Mary Sue

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade.

Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.