Michelle de Kretser wins Miles Franklin literary award

Vicky Frost, Guardian

Questions of Travel comes out on top of the unprecedented all-female-authored shortlist

Michelle de Kretser has been named winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin literary award for her fourth novel, Questions of Travel, at a ceremony in Canberra on Wednesday lunchtime.

De Kretser beat four other shortlisted authors – all women, for the first time in the prize’s history – with her novel set in Australia and Sri Lanka, where she was born, that touches upon travel, tourism and flight through its double-narrative structure.

Reviewing the book for Guardian, AS Byatt described it as a novel quite unlike any other. “It is not really possible to describe, in a short space, the originality and depth of this long and beautifully crafted book,” Byatt wrote. “It isn’t easy to read because the reader is always in danger of missing something significant. It has an extraordinary ending. It persists in the mind long after the last page.”

The Miles Franklin award, which was established in 1954 to encourage and support writers of Australian literature, is presented to novels judged to be of the highest literary merit, and which “present Australian life in any of its phases”.

Speaking on behalf of the 2013 judging panel, Richard Nevill …

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/19/michelle-de-kretser-miles-franklin