January 1987. Alix Bowen has moved away from London to Yorkshire. There, she regularly visits a mass-murderer in a high-security prison. But has her natural curiosity in his motives and character crept into obsession?

Meanwhile, Alix's life continues to cross and uncross with her old friends Liz and Esther, now all in their fifties. As the years pass, they increasingly question the brutally prosperous and atrocity-hungry society they live in, and their complicity in it, as they navigate life in 1980s Britain.

The second in a trilogy following on from The Radiant Way and finishing with The Gates of Ivory, A Natural Curiosity sees Margaret Drabble return with her brilliant and dark wit in this bold, generous and incisive portrait of the time.

"Absorbing and thought-provoking" - * The Sunday Times *

"A remarkable mixture of . . . compelling narrative, psychological insight, generous human portrayal, acute observation, humour, horror, beauty and disgust" - * Times Literary Supplement *

"Confident and marvellously accomplished new novel" - * London Review of Books *

"One of the most thought-provoking and intellectually challenging writers around" - * Financial Times *

"One of our foremost women writers" - * Guardian *

"One of the most versatile and accomplished authors of her generation" - * New Yorker *

"The novels brim with sharply observed life and the author's seemingly infinite sympathy for "ordinary women"" - * New Yorker *