The Natural Way of Things

Winner, 2016 Stella Prize

Co-winner, 2016 Prime Minister's Award

Winner, Fiction Book of the Year, 2016 Indie Awards

Winner, 2016 Indie Book of the Year Award

Shortlisted, 2016 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Shortlisted, 2016 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards

Shortlisted, 2016 Barbara Jefferis Award

Shortlisted, 2016 Queensland Literary Award for Fiction

Shortlisted, 2016 Voss Literary Prize

The Natural Way of Things is a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, and of what it means to hunt and be hunted. Most of all, it is the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.

With extraordinary echoes of The Handmaid's Tale and Lord of the Flies, The Natural Way of Things is a compulsively readable, scarifying and deeply moving contemporary novel. It confirms Charlotte Wood's position as one of our most thoughtful, provocative and fearless truth-tellers, as she unflinchingly reveals us and our world to ourselves.

'With a fearless clarity, Wood's elegantly spare and brutal prose dissects humanity, hatreds, our ambivalent capacities for friendship and betrayal, and the powerful appearance--always--of moments of grace and great beauty ... It will not leave you easily; it took my breath away.' Ashley Hay, author of A Hundred Small Lessons