The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

Great writing

A happy, cheery book. Ideal for holiday reading or as a christmas gift.

Terrifying and brilliantly written, this book falls into the same category as 1984 and it's ilk but scores extra points for the fact that it's not so very far from the truth (imagine reading 1984 in 1950). Fundamentalist regimes are not so very far from our own imagination and we can look at Taliban era Afganistan for an example of a country where womens' rights were close to the level portrayed in this book.

More frighteningly, today, we have America cutting down on it's peoples' civil liberties after 9/11 in a way that was predicted 20 years earlier in this book (the constitution is suspended after a terrorist attack which is blamed on Islamic terrorists), and the American people happy to accept these attacks on their freedoms for the sake of personal and national safety.

A depressing book - mainly because it is just a shade away from possible.