The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction: Winner 2004

Judges report

Slow Water by Annamarie Jagose (Vintage/Random House)

Annamarie Jagose's impressively researched novel Slow Water recreates a boat journey to Australia and New Zealand in the 1830s with a remarkable precision of detail and authenticity of language. At the same time, it performs an exciting intervention into how we might imagine the histories of European colonization, and reflects on a famous gay scandal of the era from both white and Maori perspectives. Jagose switches effortlessly between the points of view of her many characters as she carefully unfolds her love story with touching humanity and sympathetic humour.