MELBOURNE, June 21 – Sri Lankan-born Australian author Michelle de Kretser has won the A$60,000 (US$55,551) Miles Franklin award for literature.
De Kretser, who is in England attending a writers festival, told The Australian newspaper she was “so completely overwhelmed” when she received a call from her Australian publisher to tell her the good news.
“There are such good writers and books on the Miles Franklin list — and just because it is the Miles, I never imagined winning it,” she told the newspaper.
De Kretser’s fourth novel, Questions of Travel, edged out strong competition in Romy Ash (Floundering), Drusilla Modjeska (The Mountain), Annah Faulkner (The Beloved) and Carrie Tiffany (Mateship with Birds).
Judges praised the way de Kretser’s novel explored “questions of home and away, travel and tourism, refugees and migrants, as well as ‘questions of travel’ in the virtual world”.
It follows two intertwined narratives of a woman who leaves Sydney and a man who flees Sri Lanka.
The Miles Franklin award was established from a bequest by the author best known for her 1901 classic My Brilliant Career.
“She went without necessities in old age in order to gather the bequest. It was an amazing, moving commitment to Australian literature, an amazing act of solidarity,” De Kretser said of Franklin.
– BERNAMA
