Whether Violent or Natural

'Sly, sharp, and utterly captivating' Rory Power, New York Times-bestselling author of Wilder Girls 'Hits you like a shot of the very good stuff ... Dark-hearted, complex, and accomplished' C. A. Fletcher, author of A Boy and His Dog at the End of the WorldA darkly brilliant and twisted solo debut novel about secrets, lies - and strange revengeYears after complete antibiotic resistance has resulted in the loss of most human life on earth, Kit and Crevan eke out an existence on a remote island. Under a collapsing castle, they spend their days in an underground bunker packed with emergency stores, venturing out only at night. They are safe. One evening a woman washes ashore, nearly drowned. Crevan wants to keep her alive, but Kit isn’t so sure. The new arrival will implode Kit and Crevan’s world with dire and fatal consequences, churning up the waters of the past and unearthing secrets they have kept from each other and from themselves. Who is really in control – and what are they both capable of doing to protect their haven? Gripping, treacherous and visceral, Whether Violent or Natural is an unforgettably dark and strikingly original work by a major new talent.

Whether Violent or Natural hits you like a shot of the very good stuff - which it is. I downed it in one. It went down very smoothly. There is - in all the right ways - a faint top-note of Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory, but it’s very much its own dark-hearted, complex, and accomplished thing, with an engaging narrator as snarled in the seductive tangle of her own words as she is hemmed in by the overgrown vegetation that covers the small island on which she is trapped, Sly, sharp, and utterly captivating ... Calder’s voice is one I won’t soon forget, Praise for THE OFFSET: '“Smart, compelling and absolutely of the moment, A twisted reversal of The Handmaid’s Tale set in a ravaged dystopia, simmering with menace and tension. Bleak, haunting and intriguing, Thrilling, terrifying and beautifully crafted ... the perfect science-fiction novel for our times. I devoured it

Natasha Calder studied at Trinity College Dublin for her first degree, and then at Cambridge for an MPhil. Her short fiction has been published in Stinging Fly, Lackington’s and Curiosities, and she is the co-author of The Offset. She lives in Durham.

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