Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words beacuse women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Haandmaids are valued on…
The Republic of Gilead allows Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like all dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on whom her future hangs...
A leathery bog-man transforms an old love affair; a sweet, gruesome gift is sent to the wife of an ex-lover; landscape paintings are haunted by the ghost of a young girl. This dazzling new collection of short stories takes us into familiar Atwood territory to reveal the many textures of contemporary life and the logic of irrational behaviour