Trump victory renews interest in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and other fictional dystopias

By Hillel Italie, The Associated Press on November 7, 2024.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump gestures as he walks with former first lady Melania Trump at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

NEW YORK (AP) – “The Handmaid’s Tale” is selling again.

Since President-elect Donald Trump clinched his return to the White House, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic about a country in which women are brutally repressed has been high on the Amazon.com best seller list. “The Handmaid’s Tale” was popular throughout Trump’s first term, along with such dark futuristic narratives as George Orwell’s “1984” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” both of which were in the Amazon top 40 as of Thursday afternoon. Another best-seller from Trump’s previous time in office, Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” was in the top 10.

Pro-Trump books also were selling well. Former first lady Melania Trump’s memoir, “Melania,” was No. 1 on the Amazon list, and Vice President-elect JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” was in the top 10. Donald Trump’s photo book “Save America” was in the top 30.

At Barnes & Noble, “Fiction and non-fiction books that feature fascism, feminism, dystopian worlds and both right-and-left leaning politics rocketed up our sales charts with the election results,” according to Shannon DeVito, the chain’s director of books. She cited “Melania,” “On Tyranny” and Bob Woodward’s latest, “War,” which covers the responses of Trump and President Joe Biden to the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

DeVito also cited “a massive bump in dystopian fiction,” notably for “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “1984.”