★ Longlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize (2026)
★ In frontier country, travelling in a van containing a mysterious diva, a young woman must find her feet.

Ellie Kent longs to belong. Orphaned as a child and raised in the bleak confines of an asylum, Ellie jumps at the opportunity when she is sent as a governess to a family bound for the distant colony of South Africa. But before reaching their destination, she is abandoned once more – cast adrift in a land as vast as it is unforgiving. Left with no choice but to join a caravan of settlers, Ellie finds herself in the company of an unsavoury trader, a mysterious opera singer, and a young Afrikaner, Gysbert de Boer, tasked with delivering her safely to an uncertain future. As war brews on the horizon and the settlers struggle for survival in a land that offers little mercy, Ellie must carve out a home – or be lost to the wilderness forever. A sweeping frontier fable, The Immortalites is a masterfully crafted tale of survival, sacrifice, and the search for belonging.

Claire Robertson
Has worked in newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Her debut novel, THE SPIRAL HOUSE, won South Africa’s most important literary award, the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and a South African Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize. She is the author of three more novels: THE MAGISTRATE OF GOWER, UNDER GLASS, both shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, and ISLE. She lives in Australia.