A gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and what it means to hunt and be hunted - and the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.
From the author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Stone Yard Devotional
'Savage'
PAULA HAWKINS
'Unforgettable'
LIANE MORIARTY
'A masterpiece'
GUARDIAN
'The Handmaid's Tale for our age'
ECONOMIST
Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down property in the middle of a desert.
Strangers to each other, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be there with eight other girls, their heads shaved, guarded by two inept yet vicious jailers.
Doing hard labour under a sweltering sun, the prisoners soon learn what links them: in each girl's past is a sexual scandal with a powerful man.
They pray for rescue but as the hours turn into days and the days into weeks and months, it becomes clear only the girls can rescue themselves.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ The sensational, prize-winning novel ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
⭐ Winner, 2016 Stella Prize
⭐ Winner, 2016 Indie Book of the Year Award
⭐ Winner, Fiction Book of the Year, 2016 Indie Book Award
⭐ Winner, 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction
⭐ Winner, Reader's Choice, 2016 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year
⭐ Shortlisted, 2016 Miles Franklin Literary Award
⭐ Shortlisted, 2016 ABA Nielsen BookData Booksellers Choice Award
⭐ Longlisted, 2017 International Dublin Literary Award
It's like digesting a living creature, one with claws still intact . . . if Wood is concerned with investigating and condemning masculine violence, both in its overt manifestations and those encoded in the structure of contemporary culture, she is too much of an artist to reduce her critique to a simple binary . . .
the final effect is stunning.