The shortlist for the prestigious 2016 Miles Franklin Literary Award promises to take lovers of Australian literature on an emotional journey, allowing readers to celebrate and reflect on Australian life .
As Miles Franklin herself intended, they challenge how we look at ourselves – both personally and as a country – revealing observations about the fabric of modern day Australian society.
Lucy Treloar, A.S. Patric, and Myfanwy Jones – all nominated for the first time – join authors Peggy Frew and Charlotte Wood on the shortlist for the 2016 award, which aims to recognise uniquely Australian literature that presents Australian life in any of its phases.
The 2016 Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist is:
Hope Farm by Peggy Frew: A quietly powerful and haunting novel, full of the aching intensity of the outcast, rendered in pitch-perfect tone and heartbreakingly believable.
Leap by Myfanwy Jones: A beautiful story about the resolution of grief, not by moving on or forgetting, but by finally accommodating, absorbing and accepting its weight.
Black Rock White City by A.S. Patric: A fresh and powerful exploration of the immigrant experience and Australian life that explores the damages of war, the constraints of choice, the possibility of redemptive love and social isolation amid suburbia.
Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar: This portrait of a frontier life is a time-traveller’s delight as it unsettles assumptions about European ‘settlement’ and its devastating effects on Aboriginal culture, while graphically charting the unequal nineteenth-century power relations between men and women.
The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood: A confronting story of misogyny that is both shockingly realist in its details and deeply allegorical in its shape.
The winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2016 will be announced at the Melbourne Writers Festival on 26 August 2016.
Enter your details below for a chance to win a Miles Franklin book pack, consisting of all five short-listed novels. Competition closes at 5pm, Tuesday 26 July, 2016.
http://www.the-retiree.com.au/features/competitions/miles-franklin-award-book-pack/By submitting contact details for this content, entrants will receive our free digital edition to The Retiree Magazine as well as our eNewsletter. Entrants can unsubscribe after they receive their first eNewsletter. The competition closes on Tuesday July 26, 2016 at 5pm. Australian Publication Resource Service, publisher of The Retiree Magazine will not share your details with anyone else without prior consent. Good Luck!
