Written in 1985, I should’ve read this book ages ago. But, considering our current fraught and frightening political climate, now is actually a profoundly fitting time to delve into one of the most upsetting yet eerily plausible dystopian stories I’ve read yet. The Handmaid’s Tale is set in a not-so-futuristic United States in which the government has been overthrown by an extreme Christian movement that establishes a totalitarian theocracy under which human rights become severely limited and extreme class divisions are created. Women are stripped of all their rights (they aren’t even allowed to read) and, for the class known as “handmaids”, even their personhood is lost. These women are breeding stock, valued only insofar as their ovaries are viable, kept for reproductive purposes in order to aid the ruling class during a period of sharply declining births. Our titular Handmaid is a woman named Offred, who remembers what the world was like before as she endures what it has become. Hers is a tale of survival, resilience, and resistance. Right now Offred’s story feels less like dystopian satire than a dire warning and a rallying call. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.