Reading List · Literary Prizes
Australia’s oldest literary prize was paid for by a woman who left her estate to it in her will, on one condition: the winning novel has to present “Australian life in any of its phases”. That sentence has been argued over ever since, and it has kept at least one novel out. In seventy years the judges have handed out 67 awards to 69 books, refused to give it at all three times, and split it twice. This page has all of them, with the last fifteen winners set out in full.
By Lisanne Swart · 69 books, 67 awards · 1957–2026 · Australian authors · Last reviewed 17 September 2026
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Quick answer
The Miles Franklin is the award Australian novelists want, worth A$60,000 and given every year since 1957 to a novel of the highest literary merit that presents Australian life. Sixty-nine books have won it, four writers have won it more than twice, and in 1973 and 1983 the judges announced that nothing that year was good enough. The 2026 winner, announced in August, is Fierceland by Omar Musa. Every winner is in the table further down; the fifteen most recent are set out in full above it, because those are the ones you can still walk into a shop and buy.
How this page chooses
Two jobs, kept apart. The table further down lists every winner from 1957 to 2026, including the three years when no award was made — facts only, nothing left out because it is hard to find.
The fifteen with a full entry are simply the fifteen most recent: 2012 to 2026, one for every year, no gaps. There is no ranking in it and no shortlist of favourites, because sixty-nine novels is more than any one reader has read and this page does not pretend otherwise. What the recent fifteen have in common is practical: they are all still in print, so a link under them goes somewhere. Under each one is a line of plain fact — another prize, a shortlist, the publisher — and nothing that cannot be checked.
Oldest first, one for each year. The line in red under each one is a fact about the book, not an opinion about it.
Ruth Becker, in Sydney in 2001, looks back on the group of German exiles she belonged to in London in the 1930s: her cousin Dora Fabian, the playwright Ernst Toller, her husband Hans. They were trying to warn the world about Hitler while the British government considered deporting them. Everyone in the book was a real person.
Also won the Barbara Jefferis Award and the ABIA Book of the Year in 2012.
Two lives that barely touch. Laura, an Australian, travels for years and then takes a job at a Sydney travel-guide publisher; Ravi, a Sri Lankan IT worker, leaves home after something he cannot go back from. Five hundred pages on what moving around the world costs, and on who is allowed to do it.
Also won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction and the ALS Gold Medal in 2013.
Jake Whyte keeps sheep alone on a British island, and something is killing them one at a time. Her present runs forward and her Australian past runs backward, chapter by chapter, until the two ends meet in the middle.
Also won the Encore Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize.
Told by Jimmy Flick, a boy whose mind runs too fast and too slow at the same time, and who reads his family more accurately than they read themselves: a mother who steadies him by counting, and a father who does not steady him at all.
Shortlisted for the Stella Prize the same year.
Jovan was a writer and an academic in Yugoslavia before the war. In Melbourne in the late 1990s he and his wife Suzana clean a hospital. Then graffiti starts appearing inside the building, it is his job to remove it, and it keeps getting worse.
Published by Transit Lounge, a small press; highly commended in the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Fiction.
Frederick Lothian, a retired engineer, has moved into a retirement village after his wife’s death, surrounded by the modernist furniture he collects and no longer speaking to his daughter. His neighbour Jan keeps talking to him anyway.
Also won the Colin Roderick Award in 2017.
Five loosely connected lives, mostly in Sydney but also in Paris and in Sri Lanka, in a book that works as linked stories rather than as a novel. Very funny about people who think of themselves as worldly.
De Kretser’s second Miles Franklin, five years after the first.
Kerry Salter rides back into her home town on a stolen Harley for a grandfather who is dying, and finds the council planning to build on the river the family has always known as theirs. Funny and furious in the same sentence.
Lucashenko is a Bundjalung woman; the book also won the Queensland Premier’s Award.
Three voices: a grandfather compiling a dictionary of his language while he is dying, a missionary’s letters from a century earlier, and a granddaughter who comes home from Europe for the funeral and finds a mining lease on the land.
Winch is a Wiradjuri woman; the novel also won the NSW Premier’s Book of the Year.
Erica Marsden moves to a hamlet on the coast, near the prison where her son is serving his sentence, and decides to build a labyrinth by the sea. To finish it she has to start asking strangers for help.
Also won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Voss Literary Prize in 2021.
A message arrives from somebody who knew Maggie before, and the quiet life she has built in a small town stops being quiet. Her story runs from 1975 to 2018, through the Australian care system and on to New Zealand and America: a life put back together more than once.
Shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the Voss Literary Prize and four other awards in 2022.
Cinnamon Gardens is a nursing home in Sydney, founded in the 1980s by Maya and Zakhir, who left Sri Lanka during the civil war. The present-day story and the Sri Lankan one run alongside each other until a complaint to the Human Rights Commission brings them together.
Published by Ultimo Press in 2022.
A haze settles over a town in the north and will not lift. A man called Cause Man Steel decides the answer to the end of the fossil fuel age is a transport empire built on feral donkeys, and sets out to find the right one. Seven hundred and thirty-six pages, and it moves.
Also won the Stella Prize and, in Britain, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Two strands. Xiang Lu is sacked from the Chinese consulate in Sydney when it comes out that he has been running everything through Google Translate; centuries earlier an emperor commissions a book and then bans it. The two meet on a film set in a Chinese ghost city.
Also shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal and the Age Book of the Year.
Roz and Harun grow up in Kota Kinabalu, on Borneo, as the children of a palm oil baron. The book opens on a trip into the forest with their father in 1998 and follows them back to Malaysia years later for his funeral, by way of Sydney, Nigeria and Venice, with Joseph Conrad turning up as a character. Musa has called it a response to and a critique of Heart of Darkness: where Conrad used the forest as a backdrop, this one gives it a voice.
Announced on 5 August 2026. It also won the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Prize for Fiction.
Fourteen writers have won the Miles Franklin twice or more. These are the four at the top.
Ten more have won it twice: Alex Miller, Alexis Wright, Christopher Koch, George Johnston, Jessica Anderson, Kim Scott, Michelle de Kretser, Patrick White, Rodney Hall, Thomas Keneally.
All 69 books across 67 awards, plus the three years with no winner. The titles in red are the fifteen most recent, which have a full entry above.
| Year | Author | Novel |
|---|---|---|
| 1957 | Patrick White | Voss |
| 1958 | Randolph Stow | To the Islands |
| 1959 | Vance Palmer | The Big Fellow |
| 1960 | Elizabeth O'Conner | The Irishman |
| 1961 | Patrick White | Riders in the Chariot |
| 1962 | Thea Astley | The Well Dressed Explorer |
| 1962 | George Turner | The Cupboard Under the Stairs |
| 1963 | Sumner Locke Elliott | Careful, He Might Hear You |
| 1964 | George Johnston | My Brother Jack |
| 1965 | Thea Astley | The Slow Natives |
| 1966 | Peter Mathers | Trap |
| 1967 | Thomas Keneally | Bring Larks and Heroes |
| 1968 | Thomas Keneally | Three Cheers for the Paraclete |
| 1969 | George Johnston | Clean Straw for Nothing |
| 1970 | Dal Stivens | A Horse of Air |
| 1971 | David Ireland | The Unknown Industrial Prisoner |
| 1972 | Thea Astley | The Acolyte |
| 1973 | No award made | |
| 1974 | Ronald McKie | The Mango Tree |
| 1975 | Xavier Herbert | Poor Fellow My Country |
| 1976 | David Ireland | The Glass Canoe |
| 1977 | Ruth Park | Swords and Crowns and Rings |
| 1978 | Jessica Anderson | Tirra Lirra by the River |
| 1979 | David Ireland | A Woman of the Future |
| 1980 | Jessica Anderson | The Impersonators |
| 1981 | Peter Carey | Bliss |
| 1982 | Rodney Hall | Just Relations |
| 1983 | No award made | |
| 1984 | Tim Winton | Shallows |
| 1985 | Christopher Koch | The Doubleman |
| 1986 | Elizabeth Jolley | The Well |
| 1987 | Glenda Adams | Dancing on Coral |
| 1988 | No award made | |
| 1989 | Peter Carey | Oscar and Lucinda |
| 1990 | Tom Flood | Oceana Fine |
| 1991 | David Malouf | The Great World |
| 1992 | Tim Winton | Cloudstreet |
| 1993 | Alex Miller | The Ancestor Game |
| 1994 | Rodney Hall | The Grisly Wife |
| 1995 | Helen Demidenko | The Hand That Signed the Paper |
| 1996 | Christopher Koch | Highways to a War |
| 1997 | David Foster | The Glade Within the Grove |
| 1998 | Peter Carey | Jack Maggs |
| 1999 | Murray Bail | Eucalyptus |
| 2000 | Thea Astley | Drylands |
| 2000 | Kim Scott | Benang |
| 2001 | Frank Moorhouse | Dark Palace |
| 2002 | Tim Winton | Dirt Music |
| 2003 | Alex Miller | Journey to the Stone Country |
| 2004 | Shirley Hazzard | The Great Fire |
| 2005 | Andrew McGahan | The White Earth |
| 2006 | Roger McDonald | The Ballad of Desmond Kale |
| 2007 | Alexis Wright | Carpentaria |
| 2008 | Steven Carroll | The Time We Have Taken |
| 2009 | Tim Winton | Breath |
| 2010 | Peter Temple | Truth |
| 2011 | Kim Scott | That Deadman Dance |
| 2012 | Anna Funder | All That I Am |
| 2013 | Michelle de Kretser | Questions of Travel |
| 2014 | Evie Wyld | All the Birds, Singing |
| 2015 | Sofie Laguna | The Eye of the Sheep |
| 2016 | A. S. Patrić | Black Rock White City |
| 2017 | Josephine Wilson | Extinctions |
| 2018 | Michelle de Kretser | The Life to Come |
| 2019 | Melissa Lucashenko | Too Much Lip |
| 2020 | Tara June Winch | The Yield |
| 2021 | Amanda Lohrey | The Labyrinth |
| 2022 | Jennifer Down | Bodies of Light |
| 2023 | Shankari Chandran | Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens |
| 2024 | Alexis Wright | Praiseworthy |
| 2025 | Siang Lu | Ghost Cities |
| 2026 | Omar Musa | Fierceland |
Twice the judges read everything that was entered and decided none of it was good enough. In 1973 they said so publicly, and again in 1983. There was no winner either time and no runner-up; the year simply has a gap in it. The third gap, 1988, is duller and more forgivable: the award moved from being named after the year a book was published to the year the prize was handed over, and one year fell through the crack.
The condition in the will is the other reason a book can disappear. In 1994 Frank Moorhouse entered Grand Days, a novel about an Australian woman working at the League of Nations in Geneva, and it was ruled ineligible: set in Europe, and therefore not presenting Australian life. He won seven years later with Dark Palace — the sequel, about the same woman.
Miles Franklin’s first name was Stella. In 2011 a group of Australian writers, editors, publishers and booksellers began arguing in public that women were badly under-represented in the country’s biggest literary prize, and in 2013 they started one of their own and called it the Stella Prize, after the same woman.
The two awards now overlap more than they used to. Praiseworthy took both in 2024.
Australia’s best known literary prize, given every year since 1957 to a novel of the highest literary merit that presents Australian life in any of its phases. It was paid for by the will of the writer Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, who died in 1954. It is worth A$60,000.
Omar Musa, for Fierceland, announced on 5 August 2026. It is a novel about inheritance and complicity, set partly in Malaysian Borneo, which Musa has called a critique of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Musa grew up in Queanbeyan, near Canberra, and was a slam poetry champion before he wrote fiction.
Sixty-nine, across sixty-seven awards. The count is lower than the number of years because no award was made in 1973, 1983 and 1988, and higher than the number of awards because the prize was shared in 1962 and again in 2000.
The judges decided that nothing entered in those years was good enough to win. The award was simply not made. A third year, 1988, has no winner for an administrative reason: the award changed from being dated by the year of publication to the year of announcement.
Tim Winton and Thea Astley, with four each. Peter Carey and David Ireland have three. Ten more writers have won it twice, among them Patrick White, Thomas Keneally, Kim Scott, Michelle de Kretser and Alexis Wright.
If you want the book most Australians would name, read Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, which won in 1992. If you want the one that also won the Booker Prize, read Oscar and Lucinda. If you would rather start with something recent, the last fifteen winners are set out in full above, from All That I Am in 2012 to Fierceland in 2026.
Once. Peter Temple’s Truth won in 2010, the first crime novel entered for the award and the only one so far to take it.
It is the condition Miles Franklin set in her will, and the judges apply it. It has kept at least one novel out: Frank Moorhouse’s Grand Days was ruled ineligible in 1994 for being set in Europe. He won in 2001 with its sequel, Dark Palace.
The Miles Franklin is open to all Australian novelists and has run since 1957. The Stella Prize, started in 2013 and named after Miles Franklin’s first name, was set up because women were under-represented in Australia’s major literary awards, and it is open to fiction and non-fiction by Australian women and non-binary writers.
My guide to Australian authors goes wider than the prize: the writers worth reading whether or not a jury ever agreed.
Winner list last verified 17 September 2026.
Nothing here was suggested by a machine.
I picked these fifteen myself,
and the reasons are on the page.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Australian life in any of its phases.”
— the condition Miles Franklin set in her will, and the sentence the judges have been arguing about since 1957
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
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