This book is a first-person narrative from the perspective of a character named Offred.
The basic idea is that an unnamed Protestant Christian denomination takes over the USA and totally reconstructs the society in a radical way. There is some sort of disaster/war which sterilizes a segment of the female population thus the remaining fertile females are pressed into service as breeding machines (called Handmaids).
There is a whole new social structure set up with Aunts (train Handmaids), Commanders (leaders), Angels (protect the Handmaids) and so on. Atwood gives subtle hints about the workings of Gilead (the new name of the USA after the fictional revolution) but they are not sufficient for one to understand Gilead society. As an appendix, there is a section called, "Historical Notes," which is an academic conference set in 2195 (approx. 150 years after the events of the novels) and some more details emerge. This section was probably the most interesting in the book.


This novel is in the same genre as, "Brave New World," by Aldous Huxley and, "1984," by George Orwell. The innovation in this novel is the specific focus on women. That said, those other two novels are definitely better than this.