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  • Published: 30 May 2016
  • ISBN: 9780143780717
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

Watershed




Savage and apocalyptic, this is the new world.

Savage and apocalyptic, this is the new world.

Devoid of rain, the earth has shrunk to dust and salt, hemmed by a swollen sea. Survivors gather to re-establish order but it’s nothing like before.
It is Jeremiah’s world.

Commanded by the cruel Garrick, Jem is a Watchman and hunter of Disses: rebels who dare to challenge the Tower and its ruling Council. Loner by design and killer by nature, he’s unapologetically part of a cruel regime until a new assignment exposes a web of deceit, and past sins demand their reckoning. When a young boy elicits his sympathy, and an enigmatic woman his interest, Jem is made to question everything he believes before undertaking one last terrifying mission. Now he must do unto others if he's to take care of his own.

In this dark and compelling first novel from a stunning new voice in fiction, it is impossible to know who is friend or foe, hero or villain.

  • Published: 30 May 2016
  • ISBN: 9780143780717
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

About the author

Jane Abbott

A single mother of two teenaged boys, Jane was born in the UK, raised in the leafy suburbs of Sydney’s North Shore, and now divides her time between Melbourne and central Victoria. Jillaroo, nurse, secretary, short-time teacher, office administrator (followed by a reluctant career in marketing), she has tried her hand at most things and lived in many places.

Her second manuscript, Watershed, was written in 2013; it received a Commendation in the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and secured Jane a place in the ACT Writers’ Hardcopy Professional Development Program for Australian Writers (Fiction Edition), where she met her future literary agent.

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Praise for Watershed

The world-building here is excellent. Abbott is strong on the anthropological details. She also shows how the good intentions of a community are perverted not just by scarcity but by emergent patterns of power and the Nietzschean urge to preserve them at all costs. An accomplished and highly readable debut.

Ed Wright, The Australian

Watershed is brilliantly imagined, clever and just plain thrilling. Cancel everything, you won’t be able to stop reading.

Toni Jordan

Abbott's ability as a female writer to get inside the skin of the young Jeremiah is one of the book's highlights.

Linda Morris, The Sunday Age

Awards & recognition

Aurealis Awards

Shortlisted  •  2016  •  Aurealis Awards - Best Science Fiction Novel

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Enter Watershed: Jane Abbott’s savage and apocalyptic vision of the future.