gilead, has overthrown the u.s. government. the newer jim organizes society using an extreme interpretation of the old testament. women are the lowest ranking class, prevented from owning property, reading and writing, and deprived of control over their reproductive functions. environmental catastrophes have rendered much of the population in fertile, so the government has reintroduced unforced surrogacy. all of the handmaiden a book of genesis in the bible. our narrator and our heroine, known only as alfred in the book, a slave name, meaning she s literally of fred her commander is assigned to one such family as a surrogate. weeks after president trump s inauguration in january 2017 a handmade stale saw a resurgent hit in the year times of bestsellers list after nearly three decades in print. the fictional world that margaret atwood created felt suffocatingly close to that new reality in that moment. the writing was on the wall, and on the pages of margaret