Australian author Charlotte Wood has been awarded this year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction for her poetic dystopian novel THE NATURAL WAY OF THINGS. Published in the United States in June 2016 by Europa Editions, this novel tells the harrowing tale of a group of young women who are held captive on a remote compound, where they are punished and demonized for their sexuality.
“This is a novel that works as both a powerfully evocative allegory and a shockingly realist narrative” comment the PMLA judges, “a remarkable feat in a literary culture that no longer easily accepts the blurring of genres. Wood dares the reader to acknowledge the reality that, despite an increased public awareness, the degradation of and violence towards women is escalating rather than abating.”
THE NATURAL WAY OF THINGS is also the winner of the Stella Prize and the Australian Indie Booksellers Fiction Award, and was a finalist for both the Miles Franklin Award and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
