The Thinning

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 STELLA PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 FICTION INDIE BOOK AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 ACT LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION

A dying world. A race against time. Two unlikely heroes. The teen edition of the critically acclaimed and bestselling novel from Australian novelist Inga Simpson.

Fin grew up by an observatory, learning about telescopes and planets, and inspired by the passion of her parents for astrophotography and astronomy. Those days are long over. Now Fin, her mother, Dianella, and a band of outliers live deep off the grid, always on amber alert and always ready to run.

In the outside world, things are not good: extinctions and a loss of diversity threaten what's left of the environment. Nothing is safe. And then a stranger appears in Fin's camp. An Incomplete - a new breed of widely-distrusted evolved human.

As a new disaster looms, Fin finds herself thrust into an unlikely partnership with the Incomplete. Together, they must undertake a dangerous journey to participate in an audacious plan to help restore the natural world and humankind.

'Hauntingly strange and exquisitely written' THE SATURDAY PAPER

'Incandescent . . . An electric and melancholy tale, disturbingly believable but ultimately - and surprisingly - hopeful' THE STELLA PRIZE JUDGES

'Stunningly wrought . . . The Thinning moves with the compressed momentum of a thriller towards a spectacular climax' THE GUARDIAN

'No label can fully do justice to the essence, the quality, the depth of a tale that's as subtle yet momentous as The Thinning. It is one of those rare novels you may wish to read again' ARTSHUB

'An emotional tribute to the natural world. Moving. Urgent. Beautifully written' KAREN VIGGERS

'Incandescent, righteously angry, superbly constructed' MICHAEL WINKLER