Margaret Atwood, whose dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale topped Amazon's bestseller list this week, has expressed concerns about shifting US values.

She compared attitudes to women's rights to those of 17th-century New England, whose Puritanism and intolerance formed the backdrop of her book.

The Handmaid's Tale is a speculative fiction about a theocratic dictatorship in the US where women are forced to bear children for the ruling class.

Read more: The Trump era's top-selling dystopian novels