And, in a separate essay, in which she wrote about the success of her 1985 novel, Atwood again explained that the prevailing sense of horror felt throughout her work stems from the fact that it is rooted primarily in reality.

“I made a rule for myself: I would not include anything that human beings had not already done in some other place or time, or for which the technology did not already exist,” she said.

“The group-activated hangings, the tearing apart of human beings, the clothing specific to castes and classes, the forced childbearing and the appropriation of the results, the children stolen by regimes and placed for upbringing with high-ranking officials, the forbidding of literacy, the denial of property rights: all had precedents.”

The Handmaid’s Tale premieres on Hulu on 26 April.

Margaret Atwood has a new warning about The Handmaid’s Tale