On 16 May 2023, the longlist was announced for Australia's most prestigious literary awards, the Miles Franklin Award, with twelve authors vying for the $60,000 prize. Richard Neville, Librarian from the State Library of NSW, said on behalf of the judges:
“The 2023 longlist is a reflection of the breadth and depth of contemporary Australian story-telling. The eleven longlisted novels define Australian literature as a transformative space where writers are singing the songs of the nation today. They reverberate with the cadences of this land where Indigenous sovereignty was never ceded, but also bring to us mellifluous sounds from far-away lands, weaving together literary traditions from around the world. The words of our novelists, grounded in personal experience, poetry and philosophy, are heralds of the new dawn of Australian fiction: they hum and hiss with language that is newly potent and styles that are imaginative and fresh.”.”
I have enjoyed many previous Miles Franklin Award longlisters, including the 2022 winner Jennifer Down (Bodies of Light), which was a highlight of my reading last year.
Let's check out the Longlist:
Eight year old Akita has sent her young life moving to survive. From Sudan to Cairo to Sydney and now Geelong, Akita just wants to find a place to belong. Told from the perspectives of Akita and her mother Taresai, Hopeless Kingdom explores trauma, resilience, gender, racism and migration. Kgshak Akec is a South-Sudanese writer and poet who migrated to Australia. Hopeless Kingdom was the winner of the 2021 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.
Tasmanian author Robbie Arnott is no stranger to the Miles Franklin Award, having been longlisted in 2021 for his novel The Rain Heron. Limberlost is the story of teenager Ned. One summer, while his brothers are at war, Ned and his sister and father struggle to maintain the family farm. Ned wants nothing more than to escape so he sells rabbit pelts in the hope of buying a small boat. Arnott is known for his ability to capture landscape, accurately depicting the Tasmanian countryside.
I have been longing to read this novella since it was published but had a hard time tracking it down. In Cold Enough for Snow, a mother and her adult daughter travel to Japan as tourists. Told from the perspective of the daughter, the visit prompts memories of their life and stories of extended family. While they travel together, can the two connect, or is there a growing distance that they can never traverse.
From the title and cover, this novel looks like a lightweight, but when I read more about the book, it appears to have a much deeper story to tell. Cinnamon Gardens is a nursing home in Western Sydney which serves as a refuge for residents. Many of the residents hail from Sri Lanka and were traumatised by the Sri Lankan Civil War. When a local councillor lodges a complaint against the owners of the nursing home, accusing them of racism, tensions boil over and anti-immigrant sentiments surface. Author Shankari Chandran is a lawyer and writer.
Nyoongar writer Coleman is best known for her critically acclaimed novel Terra Nullius. In her third novel Enclave, Coleman has created a claustrophobic walled city where residents are surveilled by drones. Christine, a 21 year old university student, has grown up in the Enclave and has a growing awareness of the class and racial lines in her city. What happens if she is cast out of her community? As a lover of dystopian fiction, I quite like the sounds of this novel.
Joey is a young man drifting aimlessely around Western Sydney. One day he is arrested for an alleged involvement in a violent crime. His grandmother Elaine tries to save face, but past traumas surface with issues of addiction, abandonment, misogyny and cultural division. Author George Haddad is a doctoral candidate at Western Sydney University, known for his novella Populate and Perish.
Habiba wants to bring her orphaned nieces from war ravished Somalia to Australia. She commissions Melbourne lawyer Tishtar to help her with this matter. As Tishtar hears Habiba's tales of her homeland, he remembers the atrocities he experienced in Iran following the Islamic Revolution. Author Pirooz Jafari hails from Iran, studied law and this is his first novel.
Aunty June has done her Cert III in Investigative Studies at TAFE and has now set up her own business: Yanakirri Investigative Services. When an environmental activist goes missing, Aunty June is determined to find him. While she comes up against unreliable local cops, bikies, and the community, she realises corruption is preventing her from discovering the truth. Meanwhile, the sacred Barka Darling River is running out of water. Julie Janson is a Darug Burruberongal writer and playwright. This is her debut crime thriller.
Yumna Kassab - The Lovers
This is a fable about love, but it is not a typical love story. Jamila and Amir are the lovers at the centre of this tale exploring family expectations, class divides, cultural barriers, longing, fear and insecurity. Yumna Kassab is a critically acclaimed author of The House of Youssef and Australiana, who has been listed for many awards including the Stella Prize and Literary Awards in Queensland, NSW and Victoria.
Set in Depression-era Sydney, Iris Webber arrived looking for work. She busks with her accordion, and scams to make ends meet. She meets Maisie, a young sex worker, but queer desire is hardly punished. Written in the vernacular of the time, Iris depicts sly-groggers, gangsters and good-time gals in Sydney's underbelly. Iris was longlisted for the Stella Prize. I will be attending a session with the author at the Sydney Writers Festival next week.
On 18 March 1910 in a paddock at Diggers Rest outside Melbourne, Harry Houdini sought to make a world record for aviation as the first person to fly an aircraft in Australia. In Ouston's novel Waypoints, narrator Bernard Cripp is obsessed with this tale. Cripp is grieving for the sudden loss of his wife and daughter on MH370, the Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared without a trace. How can there be no answers to that mystery? This is Tasmanian author Adam Ouston's debut novel.
At this stage I have not read any of these novels, but I do have several of these titles in the queue to be read - including copies of Jessica Au and Fiona Kelly McGregor which I have on reserve at my mother's house! I also like the sound of the Claire G Coleman novel.
Despite my terrible track record of predicting shortlisters and winners, I will guess that the following authors will make the shortlist: Arnott, Au, Coleman, Janson, and McGregor.
The Shortlist will be announced 20 June 2023 and the winner will be revealed on 25 July 2023.