Miles Franklin Literary Award 2024 Shortlist
The 2024 shortlist for the Miles Franklin Literary Award has been announced! The Miles Franklin Literary Award shines a light on some of Australia's most talented writers, by celebrating novels of the highest literary merit, that tell stories about Australian life.
The Miles Franklin Literary Award was established in the name of pioneering Australian writer Miles Franklin, best known for her novel My Brilliant Career. The award is given annually, with a prize of $60,000.
The 2024 winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award will be announced on August 1st – keep an eye on our blog for updates!
The Bell of the World by Gregory Day
From Mark Rubbo's review: Young Sarah Hutchinson is sent by her estranged parents to live with her eccentric uncle Ferny, an enthusiastic polymath, on his farm somewhere near Aireys Inlet on Victoria’s surf coast. It’s the early 1900s and Sarah, an aesthete and musician, is entranced by her uncle Ferny and his bohemian ways – her banishment is no punishment at all.
The efforts by some local notables to install a bell in the community to chime the hours and celebrate holy days, to civilise the landscape, is greeted with some skepticism by Ferny. A sinister campaign is then mounted to intimidate him. The push for the bell is, for Ferny, emblematic of the desire to change and destroy the natural environment, and to deny the injustices against the original inhabitants. This is a big, bold work: lyrical, powerful, challenging and rewarding.
Read our staff review here.
Only Sound Remains by Hossein Asgari
Saeed has not returned to Iran after publishing his novel The Imaginary Narrative of a Real Murder for fear of political persecution. He is surprised when Ismael, his father who has never left Iran, announces that he is travelling to Adelaide to visit him. During his short stay, Ismael tells Saeed the story of his unrequited love for Forugh Farrokhzad – the most controversial poet of modern Iran. The story makes Saeed see his father in a new light, and leaves him with the haunting question: had his father, unwittingly, played a role in Forugh's death?
Hospital by Sanya Rushdi, translated by Arunava Sinha
In Melbourne, a one-time research student is diagnosed with her third episode of psychosis. As she is moved from her family home to a community house and then to hospital, she questions the diagnosis of her sanity or insanity, as determined and defined by a medical model which seems less than convincing to her. Indeed questioning seems to be at the heart of her psychosis, in her over-active interpretations of signs and gestures, thoughts and emotions. She tells her story in a calm, rational voice, with an acute sense of detail and an objective air, as she wonders when the next psychotic episode will materialise, or if it hasn't arrived already.
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright
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. 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.
Anam by Andre Dao
Anam is a novel about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile.
A grandson tries to learn the family story. But what kind of story is it? Is it a prison memoir, about the grandfather imprisoned without charge or trial by a revolutionary government? Is it an oral history of the grandmother left behind to look after the children? Or is it a love story? A detective tale?
Read our staff review here.
Wall by Jen Craig
A woman returns to Australia to clear out her father’s house, with an eye to transforming the contents into an art installation in the tradition of the revered Chinese artist, Song Dong. What she hasn’t reckoned with is the tangle of jealousies, resentments, and familial complications that she had thought, in leaving the country, she had put behind her – a tangle that ensnares her before she even arrives.
