Miles Franklin Award Winner 2023

The winner of the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia's most prestigious literary award, was announced on 25 July 2023. This year the award and its $60,000 prize went to Shankari Shandran for her novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens.

Set in the Cinnamon Gardens 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. 

The judges said "It treads carefully on contested historical claims, reminding us that horrors forgotten are horrors bound to be repeated, and that reclamation and retelling of history cannot be undertaken without listening to the story-tellers among us.”

Author Shakari Chandran is a lawyer of Tamil heritage, based in Sydney. Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is her third novel.

I have not read Chai Time, and to be honest it hasn't really been on my radar. There were other titles on the longlist that I was more interested in. But, I have found that the Miles Franklin Award has exposed me to some great writers. I particularly enjoyed Bodies of Light by 2022 winner Jennifer Down.