Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale has become ‘more and more plausible’

Canadian author discusses US under Donald Trump and says setting of dystopian novel has become much closer'

Margaret Atwood has said the plot of her book The Handmaid's Tale, which tells a story of an authoritarian regime under which women are forced to reproduce, has become more and more plausible" in recent years.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, Atwood said she believed the plot was bonkers" when she first developed the concept for the novel because the US was the democratic ideal" at the time.