I had started to read this book once, years ago and couldn't get past the rape aspect of it and gave up on it. With the context relating to today's political situation, and the TV series, I decided to give it another go. I watched the TV series first and again was put off by the rape in the first show and it took me a while to revisit it and actually watch the rest of it and then read the book. I was astounded at the parallels to some of today's political situations considering the book was written in 1985. I enjoyed the book once I saw the political aspects of it and I do recommend it highly. In this dystopian novel, a combination of factors have changed society. Chemical spills have made a large part of the population infertile, natural disasters fueled by climate change have altered the earth and a fundamentalist Christian religious group has taken over the government in the US by first killing the president and blaming it on Islamic radicals and starting wars. Now, women have no rights at all and fertile women are forced to be "handmaids" passed from husband to husband and used to produce children. The story is told by one handmaid called Offred as she tells her story in the present and remembers how things were in the past.
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