<P> The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987; it was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award . The book has been adapted into a 1990 film, a 2000 opera, a television series, and other media . </P> <P> The Handmaid's Tale is set in the Republic of Gilead, a theonomic military dictatorship formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America . </P> <P> Beginning with a staged attack that kills the President and most of Congress, a fundamentalist Christian Reconstructionist movement calling itself the "Sons of Jacob" launches a revolution and suspends the United States Constitution under the pretext of restoring order . They quickly remove women's rights, largely attributed to financial records being stored electronically and labelled by sex . The new regime, the Republic of Gilead, moves quickly to consolidate its power, including overtaking all pre-existing religious groups, including Christianity, and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical model of Old Testament - inspired social and religious fanaticism among its newly created social classes . In this society, human rights are severely limited and women's rights are strictly curtailed . For example, women are forbidden to read, and anyone caught in homosexual acts would be hanged for "Gender Treachery". </P> <P> The story is told in the first person by a woman called Offred . The character is one of a class of women kept for reproductive purposes and known as "handmaids" by the ruling class in an era of declining births due to sterility from pollution and sexually transmitted diseases . Offred describes her life during her third assignment as a handmaid, in this case to Fred (referred to as "The Commander"). Interspersed in flashbacks are portions of her life from before and during the beginning of the revolution, when she finds she has lost all autonomy to her husband, their failed escape attempt to Canada, and finally her indoctrination into life as a handmaid by government - trained women called the Aunts . </P>

What happened to america in the handmaid's tale
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