The Handmaid's Tale — Margaret Atwood (1985)

Margaret Atwood's Republic of Gilead — a near-future theocratic United States in which women's bodies are controlled entirely by the state — is the most prescient dystopian novel written by a woman and one of the most discussed political novels of the 21st century. Written in 1984-85 from primary sources of actual historical events (nothing invented that humans haven't already done somewhere), it gained new urgency after the 2016 US election and the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.