Brooding, interior and utterly focused, Mr. von Sydow is a stirring presence on screen, with a weathered face apt to illustrate inner spiritual turmoil.

If anything, the dystopia is even scarier in the sequel, which provides terrifying detail on the history of the Christian fundamentalist regime that overthrows the United States at Gilead’s founding.

Maureen Day is an assistant professor of religion and society at the Franciscan School of Theology and the author of Catholic Activism Today: Personal Transformation and the Struggle for Social Justice.

What did Notre-Dame mean? What did it feel like to step into it in the Middle Ages?

Castillo writes with gorgeous precision and sensitivity about his experience as a boy growing into a man in a country that will not recognize him, his family split across borders.

Mark W. Roche is the Joyce Professor of German and former dean of arts and letters at the University of Notre Dame.