Alexis Wright and Sanya Rushdi shortlisted for Miles Franklin Literary Award
Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy and Sanya Rushdi’s Hospital have been selected as finalists for the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award. There are six books on the shortlist, which was announced in on 2 July.
A few hours later, Praiseworthy was named the winner of the ALS Gold Medal, Australia’s oldest literary award. Wright now joins Patrick White and David Malouf in winning the ALS Gold Medal three times, having previously won it for Carpentaria and The Swan Book.
Wright and Rushdi were also both shortlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize, with Wright going on to win.
Judges’ comments, Praiseworthy:
Everything about Praiseworthy is expansive: its themes, its imagery, its vibrant demotic prose. The novel is at once an epic of classical proportions and a wild comedic romp. Set in a fictional town permanently enshrouded in a mysterious haze, the story takes a quirky Indigenous family and renders them in mythical terms. The patriarch, a crackpot entrepreneur and visionary called (among other things) Cause Man Steel, hatches a harebrained scheme to preempt impending environmental collapse by cornering the donkey market. The ructions this generates within the small community of Praiseworthy and his exasperated family develops into a monumental, swirling and often brilliantly funny narrative that grapples with the largest issues of our time: climate change, the internet, capitalism, the devastating consequences on Indigenous communities of colonialism and ongoing political paternalism. A stylistic tour de force, its tone capable of switching in an instant between the lyrical and the wickedly satirical, Praiseworthy triumphantly assesses its themes against the ultimate measures: the timelessness of Country and the indomitable spirit of Aboriginal Sovereignty.
Judges’ comments, Hospital:
Hospital is a fictional flourish of poetic utterance that is, in turns, affecting and absorbing in its disquisition upon the nature of psychosis. Based on the experiences of the Melbourne-based Bengali writer, the work is an illustration of what the narrator identifies as “someone’s picture turning out superbly, accurately representing a social system.” psychosis takes us through the corridors of treatment regimes of psychotic illness, while evoking the philosophical and political underpinnings of what constitutes the individual and the social. As the narrator navigates her way through these communities, she brings to us a world peopled with every rung of society. The short narrative is autofiction and testimonial, delineating the gap between normative family structures and friendships that are formed in medical establishments. The chronicle makes us wonder about the slippage between reality and fantasy, thought and language, humour and pain, defeat and joy. Ultimately, it is a feat of imagination undertaken by an utterly original voice rooted in contemporary Australia’s multicultural, multilingual ethos. Originally written in the author’s mother tongue, the book was translated by Arunava Sinha and retains the sparse economy and piercing psychotic insights of the source text.
The 2024 Miles Franklin judging panel comprises Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian of the State Library of NSW and Chair; literary scholar, A/Prof Jumana Bayeh; literary scholar and translator, Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty; book critic, Dr James Ley; and author and literary scholar, Prof Hsu-Ming Teo.
The 2024 winner will be announced on 1 August 2024.
Further reading
‘First timers and indie publishers dominate Miles Franklin shortlist’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘Book experts on the surprises and likely winner of Australia’s biggest literary award’ ABC Arts
