28 languages and released simultaneously around the world by 33 publishers, including Canongate Books in the UK, Knopf in Canada, Grove/Atlantic Inc. in the US, and Text Publishing in Australia and New Zealand. The French translation was published in Canada by Éditions du Boréal and in France by Groupe Flammarion. The trade paperback was released in 2006. Laural Merlington narrated the 3-hour unabridged audiobook which was published by Brilliance Audio and released alongside the hardcover. Merlington's narration was positively received, though sometimes upstaged by the unnamed actresses voicing the maids. Reception On best seller lists in the Canadian market, the hardcover peaked at number one in Maclean's and number two in The Globe and Mail in the fiction category.. In the American market the book did not place on the New York Times Best Seller list but was listed as an "Editors' Choice". The book was nominated for the 2006 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and long-listed for the 2007 International Dublin Literary Award.. The book's French translation was nominated at the 2006 Governor General's Literary Awards for best English to French translation. Some reviewers like Christopher Tayler and David Flusfeder, both writing for The Daily Telegraph, praised the book as "enjoyable [and] intelligent" with "Atwood at her finest". Robert Wiersema echoed that sentiment, adding that the book shows Atwood as "fierce and ambitious, clever and thoughtful". The review in the National Post called the book "a brilliant tour de force". Specifically singled out as being good are the book's wit, rhythm, structure, and story. Mary Beard found the book to be "brilliant" except for the chapter entitled "An Anthropology Lecture" which she called "complete rubbish". Others criticised the book as being "merely a riff on a better story that comes dangerously close to being a spoof" and saying it "does not fare well [as a] colloquial feminist retelling". Specifically, the scenes with the chorus of maidservants are said to be "mere outlines of characters" with Elizabeth Hand writing in The Washington Post that they have "the air of a failed Monty Python sketch". In the journal English Studies, Odin Dekkers and L. R. Leavis described the book as "a piece of deliberate self-indulgence" that reads like "over-the-top W. S. Gilbert", comparing it to Wendy Cope's limericks reducing T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land to five lines. Theatrical adaptation Following a successful dramatic reading directed by Phyllida Lloyd at