Jane Harrison’s adult debut The Visitors (4th Estate, a Harper Collins Australia imprint) has won in the Debut Fiction category of the 2024 Indie Book of the Year Awards!

Independent booksellers around the country nominated titles for the longlist and shortlist. Bookseller judges read all shortlisted titles to decide category winners and nominating stores voted to decide the Book of the Year award.

The Visitors is adapted from Harrison’s stage-play of the same name, and set on a steamy, hot day in January 1788. Seven Aboriginal men, representing the nearby clans, gather at Warrane. Several newly arrived ships have been sighted in the great bay to the south, Kamay. The men meet to discuss their response to these visitors. All day, they talk, argue, debate. Where are the visitors from? What do they want? Might they just warra warra wai back to where they came from? Should they be welcomed? Or should they be made to leave? The decision of the men must be unanimous — and will have far-reaching implications for all. Throughout the day, the weather is strange, with mammatus clouds, unbearable heat and a pending thunderstorm … Somewhere, trouble is brewing.

Presented by Leading Edge Books, the Indie Book Awards ‘recognise and celebrate indie booksellers as the number-one supporters of Australian authors’.