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Our Better Natures

By Sophie Ward
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Brief Description
'Our Better Natures is a stunning meditation on hope, its fragile insistence, driven by Sophie Ward's singular wit and astounding philosophical playfulness. It cements Ward's place as one of our most inventive, inquisitive, & alert novelists working today' MARGOT DOUAIHY'Our Better Natures is potent and beguiling.... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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New from the Booker Prize longlisted author of Love and Other thought Experiments, Our Better Natures is a novel about three very different women - a housewife, an activist, a poet - whose lives overlap in 1970s America. A revelatory novel about how women change history, personal and political.

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'Our Better Natures is a stunning meditation on hope, its fragile insistence, driven by Sophie Ward's singular wit and astounding philosophical playfulness. It cements Ward's place as one of our most inventive, inquisitive, & alert novelists working today' MARGOT DOUAIHY

'Our Better Natures is potent and beguiling. It makes one see with a better eye' LAURA CARLIN

'Our Better Natures is an absolute marvel - a marvel of ideas, full of intellectual delights; a marvel of construction that propels us toward the most unexpected - and inevitable - outcomes; a marvel of writing, elegant, poised, wise, achingly beautiful at times, but never pulling focus from the stories of the three women and the people around them; and a marvel of compassion. A truly magnificent creation' NANCY CRANE

Amid the chaos and political upheaval of 1970s America, three very different women must accept the world as it is, or act to change it.

Phyllis Patterson is a housewife in White Plains, Illinois. Her son Jimmy returns to the family home from Vietnam with a Korean wife and two children. Blindsided by these new additions, particularly her curious granddaughter, Soozie, Phyllis's small-town world is turned upside down in more ways than she could have ever imagined.

Andrea Dworkin is an activist in Amsterdam. Having fled her abusive husband and their life together, she finds herself desperate for answers, for herself and the world around her. An encounter with Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault at their infamous Dutch debate provokes her burgeoning independence. Returning to America she will embody a revolution, no matter the price.

Muriel Rukeyser is a poet in New York. Despite protestations from her lover, Monica, Muriel insists on campaigning against injustice, using her words as weapons and pushing her body to its limits. In this era of political unrest, Muriel's life stands as a testament to the possibility of creative resistance.

A single postcard from an imprisoned writer thousands of miles away will unite these women in the fight for a world they believe in.

Full of compassion, imagination and rich storytelling, Our Better Natures is a powerful novel about language, connection and freedom.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781472156341

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 05 February 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Corsair

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 28.0mm

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 232.0mm

Weight: 360g

Pages: 288

Collections

Fiction General Fiction Literary Fiction Sophie Ward

About the Author

Sophie Ward is an actor and writer. She is the author of Love and Other Thought Experiments, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020, and her second novel The Schoolhouse, which was shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2023. Sophie has a degree in Philosophy and Literature and a PhD from Goldsmiths on the use of narrative in philosophy of mind. She lives in London with her Korean-American wife.

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