The Miles Franklin Award
July 28th 2006 09:14
The White Earth, Miles Franklin award winner 2005
This year's winner was 'The Ballad of Desmond Kale', an epic tale that takes in some of the big themes (you know - love, greed, redemption - all that stuff) and takes place in early white colonial Australia, weaving in various historical threads. The book's back cover blurb does it better justice than my paraphrasing... at any rate, it sounds like it's probably a really good read and I wouldn't mind diving into a copy sometime in the near future.
Here are the last fifteen or so winners...
'The Ballad of Desmond Kale' by Roger McDonald (2006)
'The White Earth' by Andrew McGahan (2005)
'The Great Fire' by Shirley Hazzard (2004)
'Journey to the Stone Country' by Alex Miller (2003)
'Dirt Music' by Tim Winton (2002)
'Dark Palace' by Frank Moorhouse (2001)
'Drylands' by Thea Astley (2000)
'Benang' by Kim Scott (2000)
'Eucalyptus' by Murray Bail (1999)
'Jack Maggs' by Peter Carey (1998)
'The Glade Within the Grove' by David Foster (1997)
'Highways to a War' by Christopher Koch (1996)
'The Grisly Wife' by Rodney Hall (1994)
'The Ancestor Game' by Alex Miler (1993)
'Cloudstreet' by Tim Winton (1992)
'The Great World' by David Malouf (1991)
'Oceana Fine' by Tom Flood (1990)
'Oscar and Lucinda' by Peter Carey (1989)
A lot of the same authors show up... Peter Carey has won three times, Thea Astley four times, Tim Winton three times, Alex Miller twice, David Ireland three times, etc, etc... it's a fairly small pool of writers they seem to select from over and over again. Dare I say that Australian literature has become a little stale? How many times can we talk about convicts and gum trees... I'm sure there's more out there than that but when it appears that less than half of fifty years worth of Miles Franklin award-winners are only one-time winners - well, it smells like nepotism, snobbishness or like there could possibly be a lack of talent about.
I'm not professing to be an expert on the subject or anything but I don't think the award is as credible as it probably likes to think it is. Either that, or Australian literature needs some kind of boost.
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