The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one option: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like all disenters, 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 which her future hangs. Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of twentyfirst-century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood's devastating irony, wit and astute perception.