The Handmaid's Tale
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Narrated by:
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Claire Danes
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By:
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Margaret Atwood
About this listen
Audie Award, Fiction, 2013
Margaret Atwood's popular dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale explores a broad range of issues relating to power, gender and religious politics. Multiple Golden Globe award winner Claire Danes (Romeo and Juliet, The Hours) gives a stirring performance of this classic in speculative fiction, one of the most powerful and widely read novels of our time.
After a staged terrorist attack kills the president and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred, now a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Despite the danger, Offred learns to navigate the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules in hopes of ending this oppression.
Cover art by Fred Marcellino. Used with permission of Pippin Properties, Inc.
The Handmaid's Tale is part of Audible’s A-List Collection, featuring the world's most celebrated actors narrating distinguished works of literature that each star had a hand in selecting. For more great books performed by Hollywood's finest, click here.©1985 Margaret Atwood (P)2012 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his - or any other - generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is 26 years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty - even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness, and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path.
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A Thinking Man's Novel
- By L. Berlyne on 01-12-09
By: John Updike
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Fruit of the Drunken Tree
- A Novel
- By: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Narrated by: Marisol Ramirez, Almarie Guerra, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
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Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
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Future Home of the Living God
- A Novel
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backward, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.
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“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”
- By Mel on 11-27-17
By: Louise Erdrich
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The Muse
- A Novel
- By: Jessie Burton
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Maria Elena Infantino
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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England, 1967. Odelle Bastien is a Caribbean émigré trying to make her way in London. When she starts working at the prestigious Skelton Institute of Art, she discovers a painting rumored to be the work of Isaac Robles, a young artist of immense talent and vision whose mysterious death has confounded the art world for decades. The excitement over the painting is matched by the intrigue around the conflicting stories of its discovery.
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Mixed narration
- By Amy Fleury on 08-05-16
By: Jessie Burton
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The Red Address Book
- By: Sofia Lundberg, Alice Menzies - translator
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The global fiction sensation - published in 32 countries around the world: Meet Doris, a 96-year-old woman living alone in her Stockholm apartment. She has few visitors, but her weekly Skype calls with Jenny - her American grandniece, and her only relative - give her great joy and remind her of her own youth. In writing down the stories of her colorful past - working as a maid in Sweden, modelling in Paris during the '30s, fleeing to Manhattan at the dawn of the Second World War - she may help Jenny, haunted by a difficult childhood, unlock the secrets of their family....
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narrator was overwrought
- By Janet L. Hamilton on 02-22-19
By: Sofia Lundberg, and others
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Sula
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
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Good against evil and a riotous story to boot
- By Karen on 04-11-11
By: Toni Morrison
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The Lost Family
- A Novel
- By: Jenna Blum
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1965 Manhattan, patrons flock to Masha’s to savor its brisket bourguignon and impeccable service and to admire its dashing owner and head chef Peter Rashkin, the most eligible bachelor in town. But Peter does not care for the parade of eligible women who come to the restaurant hoping to catch his eye. Running Masha’s consumes him, as does his terrible guilt over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife, Masha - the restaurant’s namesake - and two young daughters perished. Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet, an up-and-coming young model, appears at the restaurant, piercing Peter’s guard.
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STIMULATES THE HEART, MIND AND IMAGINATION
- By Miss Manners on 07-01-18
By: Jenna Blum
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Trading Dreams at Midnight
- By: Diane McKinney-Whetstone
- Narrated by: Shari Peele
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Diane McKinney-Whetstone, the award-winning and best-selling author of Tumbling, presents Trading Dreams at Midnight - - an Essence Book Club Recommended Read. Back in 1984, 15-year-old Neena's mother left and never came back. And now Neena is following in her footsteps.
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Hard to follow
- By Nevada on 08-13-10
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London Fields
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey
- Length: 21 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing who is intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts; or the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch. As Nicola leads her suitors towards the precipice, London--and, indeed, the whole world--seems to shamble after them in a corrosively funny novel of complexity and morality.
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Big chewy novel, excellent narration
- By Sand on 08-21-14
By: Martin Amis
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Wonder Boys
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.
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A strong, early Chabon (sounds like grading wine)
- By Darwin8u on 03-09-14
By: Michael Chabon
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A Golden Age
- A Novel
- By: Tahmima Anam
- Narrated by: Madhur Jaffrey
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.
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sad, poignant, thought-provoking, beautiful
- By Rio Delta Wild on 06-04-08
By: Tahmima Anam
What listeners say about The Handmaid's Tale
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Alison G.
- 10-11-23
Excellent writing, excellent performance
Margaret Atwood at her best: keenly intelligent, perceptive, funny. Her love of words, combined with Claire Danes’ pitch-perfect reading make for an especially satisfying listen.
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- Lynn
- 05-15-17
A Masterful Work of Fiction
Poetically written and masterfully done. And Clare Danes was the perfect narrator. As many others are saying, this is a timely book.
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- Craig
- 07-10-17
Great book...
Any additional comments?
Claire Danes is a brilliant actor, and I've read this book years ago but with her as the story teller I was inclined to listen to it again. To be honest, I was a little disappointed by Claire Danes as the performer of the book. It took a good two or three chapters to wrap my head around her delivery of the text, but the text is so strong that whatever it was about Claire's performance was overshadowed by the story itself. I mean, she wasn't bad, but I guess I just expected so much more because when you see her on the screen as an actor she's really, really good. Really good. If it was anyone else putting in this performance it would be good, but because you expect so much more from Claire Danes the performance is just alright.
Strangely, I don't remember the book being written first person, present tense the first time I read it, but there it is, told in the first person/present tense, exactly how everyone tells you NOT to write. Again, it was distracting for a while, but once you got into the story you didn't notice so much.
I've read a few of Atwood's books, and they aren't necessarily my favourite, but post-apocalyptic stories are strangely fascinating to me and this story is well wrought and disturbing because it feels like it could happen, that we are laying the groundwork for it to happen if we aren't careful.
Anyway, A Handmaid's Tale is a great story and worth listening to, and Claire Danes is good but not brilliant by her standards, but good enough. Give it a go, you'll enjoy the story or come away scared by how possible it all is.
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- Jeff de la Tours
- 05-26-17
Wow
Any additional comments?
This is just an incredible book. Atwood's metaphors, allusions and insights are all top notch. A true masterwork of writing. Any student of literature should have this on their list of great books. As for the audiobook version I thought Claire Danes did a fantastic job reading this with emphasis and soul. She really added an extra emotional component to the reading that other non-actors might not have been able to bring.
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1 person found this helpful
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- adrienne
- 07-20-17
Claire did a fabulous job!
I want to say that I loved the book. I want to say that I couldn't put it down. I want to say that this is going to go down as one of the best books I've ever read. Unfortunately, I felt in a way that the book was lacking some information and some key points to the story that would have gripped me a little more. I'm used to reading novels that leave you at the end wanting more, wanting answers, wanting something defined, but I felt like this book was missing chapters missing pages missing paragraphs. Somewhere there had to be something more but not in a way that most books leave you, ...
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-30-17
Couldn't even finish this book
I never start a book and give up on it but I just could not finish this book. I really don't understand what all the fuss is about.
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- Deleon Lindsay
- 09-08-17
it's alright
needed more about what was going on in the world while this was going on
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