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Winner, 2016 Stella Prize
Co-winner, 2016 Prime Minister's Literary 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
Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in an abandoned property in the middle of a desert in a story of two friends, sisterly love and courage - a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, and of what it means to hunt and be hunted.
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.
Author: Charlotte Wood
Paperback Published 30 September 2025 320 pages
'It feels at times like a nightmare; but one in which women make serious pacts, take serious pleasures, and reimagine what it might mean to live in the world. I feel as if I've been witness to the most terrible injustice, but also the most astonishing beauty.' Fiona McFarlane, author of Highway 13
'A virtuoso performance, plotted deftly through a minefield of potential traps, weighted with allegory yet swift and sure in its narrative advance. As an idea for a novel, it's rich, and to achieve that idea the writer has been courageous. Her control of this story is masterful.'The Sydney Review of Books