Literature Guides
Key Facts about The Handmaid’s Tale
Key facts
Margaret Atwood’s novel was originally titled Offred.
The atmosphere of paranoia in Atwood’s novel was inspired by Orwell’s 1984 as well as her experience of feeling as if she was being spied on when she was writing the novel in 1984 in West Berlin before the fall of the Berlin wall.
The novel won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1987.
The novel is among the top 100 most challenged books for its sexually explicit material.
Margaret Atwood wrote the entire novel on a manual type-writer that she had rented.
The novel’s most successful adaptation is a 2017- multiple award winning American web television series in which Margaret Atwood herself played a role in as an Aunt.
Atwood was consulting producer in the television series The Handmaid’s Tale.
The red Handmaid clothing is a feminist staple and has now been used multiple times during feminist protests against abortion restriction.
Although Offred’s name was never revealed by her in the novel, there is the name June in the novel that is unaccounted for and many readers have reason to think that June in Offred’s real name.
