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

Author Biography

Inga Simpson began her career as a professional writer for government before gaining a PhD in creative writing. In 2011, she took part in the Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program and, as a result, Hachette Australia published her first novel, Mr Wigg, in 2013. Nest, Inga’s second novel, was published in 2014 and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize and shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal. Inga’s third novel, the acclaimed Where the Trees Were, was published in 2016.

Inga was awarded the final Eric Rolls Prize for her nature writing and has obtained a second PhD, exploring the history of Australian nature writers. Inga’s account of her love of Australian nature and life with trees, Understory, was published in 2017. Her first book for children, The Book of Australian Trees, illustrated by Alicia Rogerson, was published in 2021. The Last Woman in the World, her critically acclaimed environmental thriller, was published in 2021 and shortlisted for the 2022 Fiction Indie Book Award. Her bestselling and critically acclaimed 2022 novel Willowman was shortlisted for the BookPeople Adult Fiction Book of the Year 2023 and in 2024 was selected by Australia’s leading booksellers in BookPeople’s 100 Must-Read Australian Novels. Her 2024 literary thriller The Thinning has been shortlisted for the 2025 ACT Literary Award for Fiction and was longlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize and the 2025 Fiction Indie Book Award. The Peach King, illustrated by Tannya Harricks, is her second book for children, and published in 2025. Once We Were Wildlife is her eighth novel.

Inga lives on the New South Wales south coast among trees.