Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, was voted the best book for men to read in a new poll by the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
In a campaign that aims to encourage more men to read novels by female authors, The Women’s Prize for Fiction team took to a poll — inspired by the release of Mary Ann Sieghart’s best-selling book The Authority Gap which highlighted that men rarely read a fiction novel written by a woman.
To fine-tune the selection process, they invited Sir Salman Rushdie, Andrew Marr, and Richard Curtis among others, to recommend novels written by women for the “top 10 men’s reading list” before the list went to a public vote. Over 20,000 votes were cast over ten days, which narrowed the sixty recommended books down to just ten. Margaret Atwood’s iconic novel The Handmaid’s Tale received the most votes and topped the list which included a stellar line-up of classic and modern novels, including works from Harper Lee, Britt Bennett, and Mary Shelley.
Here are the essential top ten books for men written by women.
1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
2. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
4. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
5. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
6. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
7. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
8. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
9. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
10. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Atwood thanked the readers who voted and said: “Thank you to the hardworking jurors and the readers who voted – I’m honored. There was no Women’s Prize for Fiction at the time I wrote The Handmaid’s Tale but it was true then as now that many male readers shied away from books by women (except for murders and fantasies with wizards) and may also have felt excluded from them.”
Atwood went on to say, “It was normal for men to say to me, ‘My wife just loves your books’, a double-edged compliment.
“But The Handmaid’s Tale is not about men vs women. It’s about totalitarianism – it is not a paradise for all men, any more than any totalitarianism is. All totalitarianism controls women in specific ways having to do with reproduction. “
“Take note in light of current events in the USA: The state’s claim to ownership of women’s bodies will also affect men.”
Personally I don't want men reading our books. It's not their business.
— Charlotte Shane (@CharoShane) May 29, 2022
The full list of 60 nominated titles can be seen here.
Men reading books in public (coffee shop, cafe, etc.) is posing for the female gaze. Not debating this
— dollar tree burner phone (@chach_maserati) April 8, 2022
