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Apr 15, 2026
Booker Prize finalist Charlotte Wood joins Rebecca Makkai for a virtual reading and conversation about her prescient feminist novel The Natural Way of Things — “The Handmaid’s Tale for our age” (The Economist), upon its 10th anniversary.
“Ferocious … recalls the early Elena Ferrante,” said NPR. “The fury of contemporary feminism may have found its masterpiece of horror,” wrote The Guardian. First published in 2016, The Natural Way of Things follows a group of women imprisoned in the middle of a desert, with no idea where they are or how they got there. But the prisoners soon learn what links them: in each woman’s past is a sexual scandal with a powerful man. As days turn to months, it becomes clear that if they ever hope to be free, the women must rescue themselves. Ever more relevant today, and available in the US for the first time, The Natural Way of Things is a lucid and prescient fable revealing our human capacity for savagery and redemption.
“Like the surreal prison itself, Ms. Wood’s writing is direct and spare, yet capable of bursting with unexpected beauty,” wrote The Economist. Discover this powerful novel for yourself in a virtual conversation between the author and acclaimed novelist Rebecca Makkai, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow whose novels include the New York Times bestseller, I Have Some Questions For You.
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