The Latent Book Club analyses the trends, themes and insights from this year’s Miles Franklin Award winners.
What is the Miles Franklin?
The Miles Franklin is often proclaimed to be Australia’s most prestigious book awards.
It is named after the early 20th century author Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, an Australian author who bequeathed the funds to start a literary prize on her death in 1954.
The Shortlist
The following six books made it on to the shortlist for this year’s award:
Hopeless Kingdom by Kgshak Akec (UWA Publishing)
Limberlost by Robbie Arnott (Text Publishing)
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au (Giramondo Publishing)
Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran (Ultimo Press)
The Lovers by Yumna Kassab (Ultimo Press)
Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor (Pan Macmillan Australia)
The Winner
As announced on 25 July 2023, this year’s winner was Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran.
Ms Chandra completed an interview with ABC’s The Book Show, which you can find here, all about her third novel that became 2023’s Miles Franklin Winner.
Our Analysis
The Miles Franklin rewards emerging authors, so it’s nice to see some first-time novelists, like Kgshak Alec getting some love. Breaking out into publishing is notoriously difficult - it is inspirational to see young authors making it in this way.
Themes
Some themes are noticeable amongst the books that were shortlisted:
Five of the six finalists, including the overall winner, are women.
Two of the finalists novels integrate themes about migration to Australia (Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens; Hopeless Kingdom);
Three of the finalists deal with intergenerational relationships and aging (Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens; Hopeless Kingdom; Cold Enough for Snow) .
Two engage with historical portraits of Australian figures. The first is Libmberlost (see below). The other (Iris) is part biography, part historical fiction about a Sydney criminal, and icon Iris Webber. We think this sounds extremely interesting, and the author, Fiona Kelly in particular did an excellent interview with the ABC regarding her book.
Insights
A couple more of our takes:
The Lovers is an experimental romance novel, which is nice to see in this list. But we’re not totally convinced by the amorphous setting.
Only one is a more traditional Bildungsroman (Limberlost). This is the novel we’re most excited about due to its confined setting (Tasmania), compelling time period (during the Second World War) and tight narrative structure - all the ingredients of an excellent story are there. Latent Book Club readers can expect a short review in the coming weeks.
The Guardian and The Conversation carry excellent write-ups on the books and the winners.
Overall
The Miles Franklin has some interesting choices. It’s a tad disappointing to see no Indigenous authors making the cut, and none of the books deal with contemporary Australian geopolitical issues in a particularly modern setting. We also note that these novels are virtually all intimate portraits, and none take an expansive view. Few are traditional stories in the ‘ripping yarn’ sense.
However, we applaud all of the finalists and are glad awards like The Miles Franklin exist as these authors carve out their place in the literary world.