When the window is partly open - it only opens partly - the air can come in and make the curtains move.Satisfying, disturbing and compelling.
Washington Post The most poetically satisfying and intense of all Atwoods novels. Macleans It deserves an honored place on the small shelf of cautionary tales that have entered modern folklore. Publishers Weekly Imaginative, even audacious, and conveys a chilling sense of fear and menace. Globe and Mail This visionary novel. It gives you the same degree of chill, even as it suggests the varieties of tyrannical experience; it evokes the same kind of horror even as its mordant wit makes you smile. E. L. Doctorow Deserves the highest praise. San Francisco Chronicle In The Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood has written the most chilling cautionary novel of the century. ![]() The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher - or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency - is an infringement of the copyright law. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Atwood, Margaret, 1939- The handmaids tale Margaret Atwood eISBN: 978-1-55199496-3 I. Title. PS8501.T86H35 2002 C813.54 C2002-902571-0 PR9199.3.A8.H3 2002 We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The author would like to thank the D.A.A.D. West Berlin and the English Department at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, for providing time and space. Lines from Heartbreak Hotel (c) 1956 Tree Publishing co Dunbar Music Canada Ltd. And Jacobs anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, Am I in Gods stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. Genesis, 30:1-3 But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal. Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones. Sufi proverb CONTENTS Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph I Night II Shopping III Night IV Waiting Room V Nap VI Household VII Night VIII Birth Day IX Night X Soul Scrolls XI Night XII Jezebels XIII Night XIV Salvaging XV Night Historical Notes About the Author I NIGHT CHAPTER ONE We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there; the hoops for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone. A balcony ran around the room, for the spectators, and I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent scent of sweat, shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume from the watching girls, felt-skirted as I knew from pictures, later in mini-skirts, then pants, then in one earring, spiky green-streaked hair. Dances would have been held there; the music lingered, a palimpsest of unheard sound, style upon style, an undercurrent of drums, a forlorn wail, garlands made of tissue-paper flowers, cardboard devils, a revolving ball of mirrors, powdering the dancers with a snow of light. There was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation, of something without a shape or name. ![]() How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability It was in the air; and it was still in the air, an afterthought, as we tried to sleep, in the army cots that had been set up in rows, with spaces between so we could not talk. We had flannelette sheets, like childrens, and army-issue blankets, old ones that still said u.s. We folded our clothes neatly and laid them on the stools at the ends of the beds. Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrolled; they had electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts. The guards werent allowed inside the building except when called, and we werent allowed out, except for our walks, twice daily, two by two around the football field which was enclosed now by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. They were objects of fear to us, but of something else as well. Something could be exchanged, we thought, some deal made, some trade-off, we still had our bodies. In the semi-darkness we could stretch out our arms, when the Aunts werent looking, and touch each others hands across space. We learned to lip-read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each others mouths. In this way we exchanged names, from bed to bed: Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June. II SHOPPING CHAPTER TWO A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out.
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