The Hystericals

By: Vivek Shraya

From the bestselling author of I’m Afraid of Men comes The Handmaid’s Tale for the post-#MeToo era: a propulsive and chilling novel set in a post-epidemic isolationist state where a young woman watches her sister’s death ignite a movement that will either free women or destroy them all.

When Sarah Munroe is sexually assaulted on her university campus and yet another man gets away with a heinous act of violence against a woman, she decides to take matters into her own hands. As an ultimate act of protest against an authoritarian government that has stripped women’s rights to the bone, she publicly takes her own life.

Her final message ignites a radical movement called #FreeToo, and soon masses of women are taking up “Sarah’s Call” and “freeing” themselves through extreme acts of resistance against a society where women are told they no longer matter. As these deaths multiply across the state, Sarah’s sister, Kennedy, struggles with grief, guilt, and complicity, as she is unwittingly drawn into the #FreeToo movement’s exploitation of her sister’s memory.

When the government suddenly declares the #FreeToo movement a new contagion, overnight, all women are reclassified as “hystericals.” As she tries to navigate a new reality that criminalizes her existence, Kennedy must confront her sister's legacy—and decide whether to surrender or survive.