The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, 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.
Now, her memories and her will to survive are acts of rebellion.The Handmaid's Tale and its iconic images - the red of the Handmaids, the blue of the Wives, the looming Gileadean Eye - have been adapted into a film, an opera, a ballet, and multi-award-winning TV series.
Jane Austen was fascinated by this question, subjecting it to her forensic eye and wonderfully ironic wit again and again. Selected from the novels Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen.
Paris, near the turn of 1932-3. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new way of thinking...
The Essays was an instant bestseller, and over four hundred years later, readers still come to him in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment - and in search of themselves.
Selected as a Book of the Year by The Times and The EconomistChina's history is an epic tapestry of courtly philosophies, warring factions and imperial intrigue.