Inside the insular, identity-obsessed demise of woke $60,000 Aussie book prize that champions 'unexceptional' literature

Sky News AU

4 days ago

The Miles Franklin Literary Award is announced this week.
Once a standard-bearer of Australian literary excellence, the prize is in a terrible state.
Each year, its shortlist seems more like a ritual than a revelation—a disproportionate array of identity-driven narratives, only loosely tethered to questions of literary merit.
The prize has become a barometer for a narrow and increasingly insular corner of Australian publishing: ideologically affirming, stylistically mediocre, and incapable of capturing the contemporary cultural zeitgeist.
In this landscape, identity is not merely a theme—it is the dominant grammar of the prize.
This affirming mindset has allowed for lax standards of literary craft, which ought to be the prize's uncompromising focus.
At a time when beautifully composed literature ought to be celebrated, the Miles Franklin has become a showcase for the predictable, the pedestrian, and the culturally prescriptive. Dirt Poor Islanders Winnie Dunn
In this identity driven narrative, a half-White, half-Tongan girl is going to see that being a dirt poor Islander girl is more beautiful than she can even begin to imagine.
While authentic, vivid and unsparing in its themes of identity, this work is conspicuously average at the level of writing craft.
It has a common and functional narrative structure, simple sentences with a rhythmic sameness, a static or observational tone that dulls the prose. Ghost Cities (2025 winner) Siang Lu
This identity-driven novel is that terrible thing - a work that thinks its more shrewdly droll than it actually is. After a page or two we're literally off to the races.
'Oh,' I say, because he has made an assumption about the language I speak - my culture, who I am or must be - entirely from my face. 'I don't speak Chinese.'
'Ah, you're Japanese? Korean?'
'I'm Australian.'
He tsks. 'No, no! I mean your race.'
Again, at the level of literary craft, this novel is pedestrian, unexceptional, and doesn't rise to the threshold of serious literature. Compassion Julie Janson
A work also centering on identity, Compassion is a story of anti-colonial revenge and roaming adventure.
It is the dramatised life story of one of Julie Janson's ancestors who went on trial for stealing livestock in New South Wales.
It continues Janson's literary exploration of the lives of Aboriginal women during the 1800s, which she began as a counter narrative to colonial history in Australian literature.
This work is very much worthy of inclusion in the best book shortlist - prose with literary craft and mature depth. Highway 13
Fiona McFarlane
In overlapping stories, Highway 13 explores the reverberations of a serial killer's crimes in the lives of everyday people.
The writing is glib, and there are low-grade constructions on almost every page:
"He ate the last of his own lunch with a conclusive flourish"
"He raised his hands as if he were about to push a flat, heavy object away from his body"
"Lena bubbled and smiled, billowed with gratitude"
This work is averagely written, to the extent it is actually worrying it has been included on the shortlist of a major literary prize. Theory & Practice Michelle de Kretser
A novel also leaning heavily into identity, the narrator, a Sri Lankan–Australian postgraduate at the University of Melbourne in the 1980s, discovers what she describes as racist diary entries in Virginia Woolf—specifically a depiction of a Sri Lankan anti-colonialist as a 'poor little mahoganyâ€'coloured wretch.'
That image profoundly unsettles her feminist identification with Woolf.
This language is a fictional construction—apparently designed to represent the kind of racist sentiments that Woolf could feasibly have held.
Conjuring up an imagined slight by a literary icon, and then using that to explore ideas of race and identity is a conceit borne of flaky contemporary sensitivities and cultural neurosis, and therefore a neat fit for the Miles Franklin Prize.
For good measure, an earlier narrator reflects on a theft he committed at the age of six, which was blamed on an Aboriginal maid who was then dismissed. Chinese Postman Brian Castro
Abraham Quin is in his mid-seventies, a migrant, thrice-divorced, a one-time postman and professor, a writer now living alone in the Adelaide Hills.
He reflects on his life with what he calls 'the mannered and meditative inaction of age'.
This is an execrable attempt at literary sophistication; a march of overwrought allusions and diversions.
The Abilene Paradox is a concept where a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that none of them individually believe is desirable, or agree on an interpretation of something, simply because they each mistakenly think that everyone else is of the same opinion.
Sadly, there are hundreds of readers who've decided this book is profound.
The current shortlist continues the same heavily disproportionate preoccupation with identity of the years prior. The 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award finalists Cold Enough for Snow Jessica Au
In this identity-informed narrative, a mother and daughter travel from abroad to meet in Tokyo. They talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes, and objects, about family, distance, and memory. But uncertainties abound. Who is really speaking here--is it only the daughter? And what is the real reason behind this elliptical, perhaps even spectral journey?
At a mere 89 pages this work is heavy on reflection and interiority, but without much or really anything in the way of literary craft.
The writing, in fact, is minimal, stilted and prosaic.
This is not worthy of a prestigious prize nomination. The Lovers Yumna Kassab
This work by a diverse author asks: What happens when we become used to each other, when we become bored, when we anticipate each other's moods like the seasons cycled in a day?
What happens when you are tired of me and I tire of you?
This bloodless work is absolutely tedious, has no literary distinction, and wallows in its interiority and malaise. It is not worthy of a prize nomination. Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens Shankari Chandran
Written by a diverse author, Cinnamon Gardens features a nursing Home nestled in the quiet suburb of Westgrove, Sydney – populated with residents with colourful histories.
This is a perfect example of a dreary trope in contemporary literature, a languid, sensual work, benignly charming - with only moderate literary craft.
At best it rises to the level of generic reading group fiction. It shouldn't be nominated for prizes. Hopeless Kingdom Kgshak Akec
In yet another identiy-themed novel, eight-year-old Akita is feeling settled at her new school and community in Sydney, when her parents decide to relocate to Geelong to be closer to their Sudanese relatives.
This coming of age story gives voice to the silent heartache of searching for acceptance in an adopted society which isn't able to look past the surface of skin colour.
Individually, the female narrators experience racism, rejection and despair.
A grab-bag of every modern literary preoccupation - diverse voice, trauma, racist adopted society, female empowerment and agency, this book, unfortunately, is not especially well written.
At times the language is rudimentary, its scope for literary expression quite narrow.
It is not deserving of a prize nomination. Iris Fiona Kelly McGregor
In this lesbian-themed work, Iris Webber arrives in Sydney in 1932.
When she meets young sex worker Maisie Matthews, everything changes.
But what options are there in a world where even on the margins, queer desire is harshly punished? The only way forward is paved with violence.
Historical fiction that revives and lends agency to an overlooked plucky woman, queer desire, and an oppressive, narrow-minded society that denigrates marginalised identities - all the modern preoccupations present and correct.
Trouble is, this is reading group historical fiction at best.
The literary craft is moderate with some deft touches.
This is not a prize-worthy novel.
It is a hardly more than a common everyday novel you would likely skirt amid the plinths of fiction in a bookstore. Limberlost Robbie Arnott
A skillfully written but essentially diffident and passive read that stirs little, demands little and speaks to little. Nomination-worthy, but leaving few traces and with hardly any lingering impression. The 2024 Miles Franklin Award Hospital Sanya Rushdi
This identity-themed work is based on real-life events and originally written in Bengali. Hospital is a first novel that depicts the precarity of a woman living with psychosis and her struggles with the definition of sanity in our society.
At just 132 pages - I regret to say that this isn't prize winning material, its only just of a publishable standard.
It is written in a functional, expressionless way, and again, while it may be tackling a compelling subject, and offer a new voice and perspective, that doesn't mean it has literary merit.
The convenors and judges of the Miles Franklin award deserve criticism for including this. Only Sound Remains Hossein Asgari
In this work, also contending with themes of identity, Saeed has not returned to Iran after publishing his novel 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.
Central to this story is the feminist Iranian poet and film director Forugh Farrokhzad – a controversial figure in her lifetime for her open views about feminine lust and love.
So: a diverse voice, with a large focus on overlooked feminine intellectual and sexual agency. Secondly, more importantly, there is no significant literary craft in how the story is written - no euphony, no impressive expression, figurative language or rhetorical flair.
It is fair to middling, and not worthy of a prestigious award nomination. Wall 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.
This work, from the first page, is lacking in literary merit, defined by drawn out interiority - emotional preciousness that offers few rewards for the reader in terms of literary craft.
It is not worthy of a prize nomination. Anam André Dao
Born to a Vietnamese family based in Melbourne, the narrator of this identity-themed novel, is haunted by the story of his grandfather whose ten-year imprisonment by the Communist government in Vietnam's notorious Chi Hoa prison looms large over his own place in the world and his choice to become a human rights lawyer.
This is an expansive story: spanning generations and examining the legacies of displacement, trauma and faith.
But again - emotional authenticity and the profound and serious realities of intergenerational trauma and dislocation are not enough to make a profound novel on their own.
While there are flourishes here and there of quality expression, the craft is only moderately good, with often sparse and functional sentence construction. While certainly a fine book, this just isn't a great one. The Bell of the World Gregory Day
When a troubled Sarah Hutchinson returns to Australia from boarding school in England, she is sent to live with her eccentric Uncle Ferny on the family property. The property and its environs are threatened, however, when members of the community ask the Hutchinsons to help 'make a savage landscape sacred' by financing the installation of a town bell.
So: a plucky young heroine, and reflections on colonialism, in a historical fiction work with wistful and whimsical elements. Day certainly has some lyrical talent as a novelist but nothing special - sometimes the writing is overwrought and overly lush. Praiseworthy Alexis Wright
In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people.
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.
Praiseworthy can be a surging, romping book seething with feeling, and shot through with sensory delight, and it can also be a seven hundred page slog, often exhausting, often needlessly repetitive.
It is a perfect book to strike a chord with droves of middle-class socially conscious people, receptive to dozens of pages of visceral disparagement which they conscientiously take as their socio-cultural due.
The perfect book to be adulated at festivals.
That, then, is the last three years of Miles Franklin Literary Prize finalists - a world from which masculine themes, proclivities and compelling characters are almost wholly exempt, and where identity is so overwhelming a preoccupation it has almost become the gist of the prize itself.
This award is no longer in the zeitgeist, and represents an Australian publishing landscape that is insular, identitarian, and lacking appeal.