Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

Gina Wisker is Head of the Centre for Learning and Teaching and Professor of Higher Education and Contemporary Literature at the University of Brighton where she teaches literature and manages educational development. Gina researches and writes on postcolonial, contemporary and genre fictions and specialises in contemporary women's writing.

• Acknowledgements; Quotations and Abbreviations; 1. Context; 2. Overview of Themes; 3. Reading The Handmaid's Tale; 4. Reception and Influence; 5. Guide to Further Reading; Index.

"Gina Wisker has created an admirably comprehensive, though attractively succinct, analysis of the key themes, and literary and political interests, of Atwood's acclaimed novel. Storytelling, different forms of narrative practice and the construction of history, are some of the many topics it treats that receive discussion in the Guide. Wisker perceptively investigates the 1980s context in which Atwood wrote the novel, while commenting knowledgeably on its socio-political importance to the present-day. She writes particularly powerfully about the feminist debates that it incorporates and examines Atwood's expose of the male control of women's bodies and her ambiguously complex description of female relationships. The representation of the characters who people the novel and the content of the individual chapters are both explored in a lively, accessible way. Wisker's decision to introduce questions for discussion is a particularly useful addition. All in all, the Guide provides an excellent commentary on Atwood's text."