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Marr’s ‘Killing for Country’ wins 2024 Indie Book of the Year Award

Monday, 25 March 2024   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

David Marr’s Killing for Country: A family story (Black Inc.) has been named Book of the Year in the Indie Book Awards.

The winning titles in each category are:

Fiction

  • Edenglassie (Melissa Lucashenko, UQP)

Nonfiction

  • Killing for Country: A family story (David Marr, Black Inc.)

Debut fiction

  • The Visitors (Jane Harrison, Fourth Estate)

Illustrated nonfiction

  • The Bird Art of William T Cooper (Wendy Cooper, NLA)

Children’s

  • The Impossible Secret of Lillian Velvet (Jaclyn Moriarty, A&U Children’s)

Young adult

  • Welcome to Sex (Melissa Kang & Yumi Stynes, HGCP).

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.

Indie Book Award judge and Eltham Bookshop owner Meera Govil described Marr’s work as ‘a brave and bold book’.

Said judge Lindy Jones, a bookseller at Abbey’s Bookshop in Sydney: ‘This is a grim and brutal subject handled in a measured and thoroughly researched way. It is not easy reading, but it is necessary reading. Marr’s meticulous research and careful prose tell the brutal colonial history of Indigenous dispossession through the greed and avarice of the squatters, the murderous barbarity of the lawless Native Police, and the criminal hypocrisy and wilful blindness of the governing class, both in Australia and Britain.’

Said Marr: ‘This is an extraordinary honour. Thank you for choosing Killing for Country as Book of the Year. It began as a confession and ended five years of work with my collaborator and partner Sebastian Tesoriero as a history of the conquest of the country. That the independent booksellers have recognised our work in this way means a great deal to us. You are true friends to writers across the country. Thank you.’

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

The winner of last year’s Indie Book of the Year was Runt (Craig Silvey, A&U).

 

Category: Awards Local news