Read about the other entries on the list.The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood, 1985
Atwood disputes the theory that her 1985 novel is set in a purely feminist dystopia: class comes before gender as a ranking factor in Gilead, a military dictatorship built on the remains of the US. Still, it’s close, with women divided into eight strata – “wives” at the top, “unwomen” at the bottom. Somewhere between lies the handmaid, one of the fertile minority required to surrender control of their wombs to the privileged and barren. Nearly 30 years on, Atwood’s projection of the most extreme victory imaginable for the anti-choice lobby retains its political tang.
The Handmaid's Tale made Bethan Roberts's top ten list of novels about childbirth, Rachel Cantor's list of the ten worst jobs in books, Charlie Jane Anders and Kelly Faircloth's list of the best and worst childbirth scenes in science fiction and fantasy, Lisa Tuttle's critic's chart of the top Arthur C. Clarke Award winners, and PopCrunch's list of the sixteen best dystopian books of all time.
--Marshal Zeringue