Reading order

The Handmaid's Tale Books in Order

by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale series: 2 books. We've reviewed 1 of them.

Read them in the order they were published

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The Handmaid's Tale
1985Not yet reviewed
In the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian theonomic state that has overthrown the United States government, a woman named Offred serves as a Handmaid. She is forcibly assigned to produce children for one of the ruling Commanders. Offred navigates a society that has stripped women of agency and individuality.
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2
The Testaments
2019Reviewed
Fifteen years after Gilead's rise, the theocratic republic rots from within. Three women—Aunt Lydia, the regime's formidable enforcer; Agnes Jemima, raised inside its borders; and Daisy, living outside them—offer interlocking testimonies. Their converging stories trace how the regime's decay becomes exploitable and what each will risk for what she believes.
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Our take

Is The Handmaid's Tale worth reading?

Book by book, from our reviews. Ratings are Amazon readers' for the edition we link, so counts vary by printing.

Book 2

The Testaments

4.6 · 51,254 Amazon ratings (this edition)

Worth reading if you want a propulsive, plot-driven sequel that delivers narrative momentum, a surprisingly rich interiority for Aunt Lydia, and genuine hope alongside the dread — especially if you're watching the Hulu adaptation.

Skip it if you prize the elliptical, unsettling ambiguity of the 1985 original above all else — The Testaments trades that moral fog for clarity and catharsis, and that trade-off is real and deliberate.

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About the author

Margaret Atwood

Author page →

Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, literary critic, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children’s books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Her best-known work is the 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale.

Also by Margaret Atwood: Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin

margaretatwood.ca

In Margaret Atwood's own words

Margaret Atwood reads an excerpt from her novel The Blind Assassin at World Book Night 2011 in London.

Uploaded by Hibrow, 2019 · Watch on YouTube ·

Also in conversation

Braving the Cold for World Book Night

Atwood expresses amazement at the crowd gathered outdoors in Trafalgar Square, noting that it is just as freezing backstage.

Why Men and Women Should Read Widely

Atwood quips that reading gives men plenty of stories to tell, while it teaches women to recognize when a man is telling a recycled tale.

Also in this interview

On The Blind Assassin

If you like this series

Books like The Handmaid's Tale

Picked in our review of The Testaments: what to read next.

Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood · also by the author

Atwood channels a real 19th-century murder case through a woman whose testimony may be performance, truth, or both — the same fascination with female voices under judgment.

Our review →

Oryx and Crake

Margaret Atwood · also by the author

Atwood's other great dystopia swaps theocracy for corporate bioengineering, asking how civilization rots when profit replaces ideology — a sharper, stranger apocalypse.

The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood · also by the author

Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin is a structurally daring, prize-winning novel that weaves multiple narratives across twentieth-century Canada, earning the Booker Prize in 2000 and a place on Time magazine's list of

Our review →

1984

George Orwell

The foundational novel of totalitarianism: surveillance, rewritten history, and a state that colonizes private thought — the intellectual ancestor of Gilead itself.

Our review →

The Power

Naomi Alderman

Inverts Gilead's question: women worldwide gain the power to inflict pain with a touch, and the novel watches a new hierarchy of gender violence assemble itself.

Vox

Christina Dalcher

A near-future America limits women to one hundred spoken words a day, enforced by wrist counters — a leaner, faster take on institutional silencing of women.

Questions

The Handmaid's Tale: questions readers ask

How many books are in The Handmaid's Tale series?

There are two Handmaid's Tale books so far.

What order should I read The Handmaid's Tale books in?

Start with The Handmaid's Tale and read them in publication order: The Handmaid's Tale (1985), The Testaments (2019).

What is the first Handmaid's Tale book?

The Handmaid's Tale, published in 1985. In the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian theonomic state that has overthrown the United States government, a woman named Offred serves as a Handmaid. She is forcibly assigned to produce children for one of the ruling Commanders. Offred navigates a society that has stripped women of agency and individuality.

What is the newest Handmaid's Tale book?

The latest is The Testaments (2019).

Has LuvemBooks reviewed The Handmaid's Tale books?

Yes, one of the two: The Testaments.

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Looking for Margaret Atwood's other books? See every series and standalone.

The Handmaid's Tale Books in Order