Alexis Wright has been announced as the winner of the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award, for her novel Praiseworthy. In winning this year’s award, Wright joins a distinguished group of two-time winners including Michelle de Kretser, Kim Scott, Thomas Keneally and Patrick White. Wright previously won the award in 2007 for her novel, Carpentaria.

On winning the award, Wright said: 'I am both amazed and humbled to win the 2024 Miles Franklin Award for Praiseworthy. To win a Miles Franklin a second time is monumental. I wanted to make Praiseworthy a big book in more ways than one. I wanted to capture the spirit of our times.'

Praiseworthy is an epic set in the north of Australia, told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned.

In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful.

This is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.

Established through the will of My Brilliant Career author, Stella Miles Franklin, for the continued support and celebration of Australian literature, the Miles Franklin Literary Award recognises a novel of 'the highest literary merit' that presents 'Australian life in any of its phases'. Read more about the award and its previous winners here.