The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s 30-year-old novel, is the best read book of 2017

Margaret Atwood’s three-decade-old, classic dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale is 2017’s best read book according to Amazon, South Coast Sun reports.

This is partly due to the award-winning television adaptation of the book, and the so called Trump effect. Atwood’s chilling futuristic novel has also seeped into all aspects of pop culture in 2017, from music to comedy, television and fashion.

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Many Americans have spent the last year drawing comparisons between the country’s current political climate and Atwood’s nightmarish fiction.

Following the election of Donald Trump, book sales rose by 200 percent.

WATCH: The official trailer of The Handmaid’s Tale:

WATCH: Trump’s The Handmaid’s Tale:

A short summary of the novel

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Canadian author Atwood, was originally published in 1985 and is set in a near-future totalitarian, Christian theonomy that has overthrown the United States government. It’s a disturbing story of a political uprising that transformed the United States into the Republic of Gilead, a brutal and repressive society that stripped women of their rights and elevated white men to the ultimate levels of power. The novel focuses on the journey of the handmaid Offred. Her name derives from the possessive form “of Fred” – Fred being her Commander. Handmaids are forbidden to use their birth names and must echo the male, or master, whom they serve. The novel explores themes of women in subjugation to misogyny in a patriarchal society and the various means by which these women gain individualism and independence.

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