Yes, yes, it's a day later than it should have been but I've got an excuse. I had planned to write and publish it on Sunday as always but first this and then this happened, and it didn't really seem that important to me to write. But then, all things look better on the morning after. (Except my head after a night's drinking, but we'll let that pass)

Both of last week's questions have been answered. Thanks to Ian Weston for sending in this link to the Guardian review of Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. So, my unvoiced conspiracy theories about hackers removing links to the review on The Guardian website were wrong.

And thanks to Bana for looking up the information about a certain Mr Rush Limbaugh mentioned in Old Glory, last week's book. Apparently, it's not a coincidence, and the elderly Mr Limbaugh mentioned there was El Grande Puerca's grandfather, with the name being passed down the generations. From Jonathan Raban's description of his meeting with the Limbaugh the Elder, it seems the ability to be a Lying Nazi Whore is something that's new to this generation of the family.

And finally, one more link for you. Back in Issue 2, I recommended Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad and now he's published Berlin, the followup to that which sounds just as fascinating - though still only available in hardback so I can't afford it myself to give you my own review of it. You can read a Guardian review of it by clicking here, though.

Remember, if you want to submit a review or recommendation of any book you've read than please email me, or if you're a publisher wanting to send out freebie review copies then please contact me.

And with a recent issue of Bartcop.com featuring Bart being accused of being a misogynist, here's this week's book with a tale of real misogyny:

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Imagine a world where the USA has been taken over by fundamentalist Christians who justify all their actions with the Bible. A world where women are second-class citizens and men have all the power. A world where the government uses a terrorist atrocity to justify a clampdown on civil rights and freedom. That's the world of The Handmaid's Tale, though what was created as a work of fiction seems to be becoming more and more prophetic every day with parallels in both the Taliban and the continued rise of the Christian Right in the US.

In the book, the US has become the Republic of Gilead, a country that's a Christian Reconstructionist's dream and everyone else's nightmare. In this near future, fertility rates have dropped alarmingly and only a small number of women are able to conceive. Taking their cue from Chapter 30 of Genesis these women become Gilead's Handmaids, separated forcefully from their own families and then sent to live with the families of Gilead's 'Commanders' to bear their children, in place of their barren wives. However, the Handmaids are not even remotely equal to the Wives or any other women in this society, beimg merely the possession of their Commander and named as such. Thus, this becomes the tale of Offred (i.e 'belonging to Fred') a woman forced apart from her husband and daughter after the Gileadean revolution and forced into becoming a Handmaid.

Like Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Atwood's skill is in making the dystopia of Gilead seem real and plausible. Told in the first person by Offred, we move back and forth between her life as a Handmaid and the Handmaid's 'training' for their roles under the rule of the Aunts with flashes back to her life before Gilead, a life of freedom that becomes more and more like a dream as time passes and the influence of Gilead becomes more and more pervasive. Offred's life passes through much of Gilead, the macabre punishments of Particicution and Salvaging and the twisted procreation of Ceremony and Birth Days where the Handmaids become just substitutes for the Wives, but noyjing in themselves.

We get glimpses of the world outside the day to day lives of the Hadmaids and the Gileadean elite they exist among. Never a full description, but enough to see that it's a dramtic counterpoint to the seeming perfection Gilead reckons itself to be, a nightmare of permanent war, rationing and persecution of heretics. And we see that Gilead has it's own condoned hypocrisies such as the sanctioned brothel Jezebel's and Offred's Commander's Wife's desperate attempts to ensure she gets a child.

Like many fictional dystopias, the world of The Handmaid's Tale is not one that is likely to come about, but the individual elements of the society are all already in existence in different parts of the world today, such as the burqa-like red veils the Handmaid's must wear at all times. It's a book that warns of the extremes of ideology and where it can take us and how believing one 'ultimate truth' can destroy everything else, even human dignity.

There's a movie of The Handmaid's Tale. It's been a few years since I've seen it, but from what I recall, it's quite good as adaptations go, capturing the feel of Atwood's society, even if a lot of the story does go missing, as happens in many adaptations. It's been turned into an opera (in German) as well - I have no idea what that's like, but have seen a review that rates it quite highly.

That's it for this week. Hopefully, there will be another recommendation next week, but I have a busy couple of weeks in prospect so don't worry if nothing appears. If I do miss a week, I promise I'll be back the week after.

Nick