Will Gerald Murnane win the 2018 Miles Franklin for his first nomination in a 44-year literary career? That is the question on the lips of the literary community with the announcement of the shortlist for the $60,000 prize on Sunday night.
Murnane, recently described as “the greatest living English-language writer most people have never heard of”, has been shortlisted for Border Districts, a loosely autobiographical novel based on meditations on history, the narrator’s own past, and the boundary between life and death.
Border Districts is one of two in the shortlist from boutique press Giramondo (who also publish the multi-award-winning Alexis Wright), with No More Boats by Felicity Castagna also featuring this year. No More Boats tells the story of a labourer – a post-war migrant who is forced into retirement around the time of the Tampa affair in 2001, leading to a breakdown that takes an unusual turn.
Two former Miles Franklin winners appear in the shortlist: Michelle de Kretser for The Life to Come (de Kretser won in 2013 for Questions of Travel); and Kim Scott for Taboo. Scott has won the award twice before – for Benang in 2000 and That Deadman Dance in 2011.
Eva Hornung’s The Last Garden won the South Australian Premier’s prize for literature earlier this year. The story follows the fallout in a small religious community from the sudden murder-suicide of a young man’s father on the day he returns home from boarding school.
Catherine McKinnon’s Storyland is comprised of five narratives that interweave across hundreds of years of Australia’s colonial history and its possible future, beginning with George Bass and Matthew Flinders’ encounter with Indigenous people in 1796 and projecting forward to 2717.
The winner of the award, which is for fiction “of the highest literary merit” that represents “Australian life in any of its phases”, will receive $60,000 in prize money while each of the shortlisted authors will receive $5000. It is named for Australian author Stella “Miles” Franklin.
The judging panel includes Mitchell Librarian of the State Library of NSW Richard Neville, director of Monash University’s Centre for the Book Melinda Harvey, Sydney bookseller Lindy Jones, and Flinders University emeritus professor Susan Sheridan.
The winner will be announced 26 August.
The shortlist
No More Boats by Felicity Castagna (Giramondo)
The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser (Allen and Unwin)
The Last Garden by Eva Hornung (Text)
Storyland by Catherine McKinnon (HarperCollins)
Border Districts by Gerald Murnane (Giramondo)
Taboo by Kim Scott (Picador)
