Miles Franklin 2026

Sydney, May 2021. Ashraf is an academic whose career and personal life are in freefall. Hannah is a young journalist struggling to honour the voices of her community.When a Year 12 student from a local Islamic college is arrested for protesting a university's ties to an Israeli weapons manufacturer, Ashraf sees an opportunity to exploit his personal connection to the situation for professional redemption. Meanwhile Hannah, who is juggling the demands of new motherhood and family trauma, fights racism in the newsroom. As Israel's bombardment of Gaza intensifies into the final weeks of Ramadan, Ashraf and Hannah must reckon with their choices, values and places in their communities. Will they be prepared to make sacrifices in the pursuit of what is right?Silence is complicity, but how do we confront the cost of speaking up? With a focus on two of today's most contested fields, academia and the media, Discipline tallies the price we all pay when those with privilege choose to remain silent.

1836. On the edge of empire, a woman arrives to claim her past. And her future.Clarissa FitzRoy, a spirited woman of mixed heritage, has crossed oceans to confront Colonel William Light, the Surveyor-General of South Australia. Bound by a shared history of dispossession by the British East India Company and haunted by secrets, Clarissa and Light must grapple with truths neither is prepared to face.Set against the stark beauty of the South Australian coast, Salt Upon the Water is a powerful story of love, identity, and resistance. As Clarissa seeks connection with her Asian family and Light is forced to confront his complicity in colonial violence, both are caught in a tide of prejudice, race, and power that will shape the course of their lives.Sweeping from the pleasure gardens of London to the canals of Venice, the streets of Calcutta to the island of Penang, Lyn Dickens' novel blends magical realism with historical depth, offering a luminous reimagining of Australia's past.A groundbreaking, poetic debut: a story of reckoning, resilience, and the courage to reclaim one's voice.Endorsements'Resonant and lyrical, Salt Upon the Water celebrates the emergence of a powerful new voice in Australian literature.' — Hossein Asgari'Written in lyrical, sensual and teasing tones, Salt Upon the Water is the tale of an indomitable woman caught in the littoral space between love and race, class and gender ... Dickens has a fine eye for detail and disturbance, skilfully weaving her intriguing narrative between history and romance.' — Brian Castro'An epic love story and an account of betrayals large and small, it offers a sobering vision of the ways the violence of the colonial encounter reverberated through so many lives, and in such startlingly different ways.' — Patrick Flanery'Lyn Dickens is a distinctive and poetic voice. A fragrant and fierce act of narrative reclamation.' — Anna Goldsworthy

Wait for the boxes to open, wait for the race to begin. Wait, and your greyhound will cease to be the dog you know and become an entirely different kind of animal.Brisbane, 1975: Andie Tanner's world is small but whole. Her mum is complicated, but she adores her dad and the kennel of racing greyhounds that live under their house. Andie is a serious girl with plans: finish school with her friends, then apprentice to her father until she can become a greyhound trainer, with dogs of her very own.But real life rarely goes to plan, and the world is bigger and more complex than Andie could imagine. When she loses everything she cares about - her family, her friends, the dogs - it's up to Andie to reclaim her future. She will need all her wits to survive this new reality of secrets and half-truths, addictions and crime.An exhilarating novel about coming of age in 1970s Australia. With luminous, aching prose, Tenderfoot will move you like no other story this year.Endorsements'Jordan is one of this country's most exceptional writers' — Better Reading'Jordan combines pace and humour with a razor intelligence' — Sydney Morning Herald'Funny, warm, delightful!' — Liane Moriarty'Taps into the humour and pathos of ordinary life in a way that has you nodding with recognition' — Pip Williams'Brilliantly observed and highly entertaining' — Joanna Nell'Funny and smart' — Weekend Australian

It starts with a lie. One small lie to get everything he wants. But one lie leads to another, and another. Caught in his own web of deception, how can he recognise the truth? And what is it going to cost him?The legendary career of reclusive cult author Brenda Shales remains one of Australia’s last unsolved literary mysteries. Her books took the world by storm before she disappeared from the public eye after a mysterious plagiarism case. But when an ambitious young writer stumbles across Brenda at a Melbourne pool, he realises the scoop of a lifetime is floating in front of him: the truth behind why she vanished without a trace. The only problem? He must pretend to be someone he’s not to trick the story out of her.One innocent lie leads to a slew that are definitively not his, as Brenda reveals the strange and troubling truth of where her books came from. Yet the more the author unravels about Brenda’s past, the more he begins to question whether Brenda is a reliable narrator. Is she spilling secrets or spinning tales? Is she, like him, little more than a talented thief? To write the book that will make his name, he must balance his ethics and ambition and decide what he’s willing to sacrifice to become the next great Australian writer.This astonishing debut, full of delicious twists and wicked insights, is a dazzling novel of desire and deception, authorship and authenticity, and the costs of creative ambition.

After many years abroad, Roz and Harun return to Malaysian Borneo for the funeral of their father Yusuf – and to reckon with their inheritance. A renowned palm-oil baron during Malaysia’s economic rise, Yusuf built the family’s immense wealth by destroying huge tracts of rainforest. What his children know is that he was also responsible for the violent disappearance of a man who stood in his way.Harun has become a successful tech entrepreneur in Los Angeles, Roz is an artist struggling to stay afloat in Sydney. Now they want to return something their father stole from the forests of their homeland.In their quest for redemption they grapple with the legacy of power and corruption, dreamers and exiles, thugs and zealots. Most dangerous of all, they are haunted — by the ghosts of colonialism, the ghosts of family, the ghosts of language, and the ghosts of the forest itself.How do you mourn your father when you know his secrets? A trailblazing journey across the globe, Fierceland weaves the past and the present into an emotionally powerful family saga that plays out at a mythical scale.EndorsementsWinner of the 2026 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction.‘An impressive, urgent novel by a talented and courageous writer.’ — Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West‘Exhilarating, melodious, smart, resonant about the fragility of our times . . . A revolutionary novel of consciousness with Borneo at its core. This is the novel I’ve been waiting for.’ — Ellen Van Neerven‘Bold and lyrical from the first page, Fierceland is a work of art.’ — Seren Heyman-Griffiths, The Guardian‘Potent and powerful, Fierceland is a shapeshifting novel of great reckoning; a brutal, beautiful study of wilderness within and without, of the ghosts that afflict and follow in the wake of family, legacy and complicity.’ — Hannah Kent‘Surprising, surreal, and written with gripping poetic prose, Omar Musa reminds us why he is a virtuoso storyteller.’ — Sara M. Saleh‘If ever there has been a Great Bornean Novel, Omar Musa's Fierceland is it. Borneo writes back in these pages, offering up a breathtaking, heartbreaking, headspinning reply to decades of Malayan supremacy and erasure. But Fierceland is more than simple; it is a wild, poetic ride, both lyrical and pyrotechnical, through the light and the darkness of a family and all its histories. Vehemently, furiously, it asks the great timeless: what does it mean to belong to a place? What do we owe our homelands? What do they owe us? Who gets to take, and who must give?’ — Preeta Samasaran

I got up heavily. All the unpleasant goings-on at this outpost. On the day of my arrival, Alexander Morton had said some evil was afoot; I wasn’t sure I believed him then, but slurs, and little lies about a key, and the fiddling with the mail. Funny games, I thought, funny games, and the secret language of objects. It all smelt of maliciousness—petty maliciousness. But I still couldn’t quite see how such maliciousness had driven Henry Hellyer to shoot himself.1832, Van Diemen’s Land. A troubled, unnamed emissary narrates his journey north from Hobart Town to Circular Head (present-day Stanley) where he has been sent to investigate the circumstances surrounding the suicide of Henry Hellyer—surveyor, amateur botanist, artist, and friend to the wife of the Chief Agent in the north.There he navigates the horror of a fledgling nation. Staying in the deadman’s room, voices come out of the darkness: lies, deceptions, fabrications, and some truth. While he tries to make sense of all the politics, pettiness, and self-preservation, he is fighting demons of his own in this novel that brings to startling life one of our country’s foundational stories. At once a personal reckoning and compelling mystery, My Heart at Evening is an irresistible observation of the forces that shaped Tasmania and Australia more broadly, from power to mateship, sexuality, and isolation—forces we still recognise today.

The journey will be long and difficult, one thousand miles. Try not to be too obvious. Stick to the backroads. You’ll know you’ve arrived when you get there.Stephen Bolin leaves a bizarre note by his deathbed, asking his sisters to take his body back to his birthplace in Far North Queensland. When they ignore his request, Stephen’s corpse makes the nocturnal pilgrimage alone. But what is compelling him and what will he find there? His journey, as a kind of jiangshi, takes him back through his turbulent family history: from his Chinese great-grandfather’s life on the goldfields in 1860s Queensland, to his Scottish grandparents’ migration to Australia as ten-pound Poms, and to his own coming of age and coming out in Brisbane and London.Original and satirical, First Name Second Name follows four generations of one family through a reckoning with racial, familial and sexual identity.

'He has no notion of how to care for a saint. Even a small one. Does not even believe … Still. Catholic or not. You don't turn away a saint.'In the north-western corner of 1950s Australia, a saint arrives at the home of a retired engineer, who unwittingly becomes her custodian. A girl of indeterminate age, her body remains as it was when she died, incorruptible. And though no one knows it, she is conscious, reflecting on past and present.Little World stretches across continents and eras – from the Canal Zone in Panama and the island of Nauru all the way to the onset of Covid in contemporary Victoria. Beautiful, rich and strange, it weaves a tale of interconnected fates as characters grapple with the unknowable, and in this way come face to face with their deepest needs.A mesmerising tale from one of Australia’s literary stars

In November 2018, Eloise and Lewis rent a car in Las Vegas and take off on a two-week road trip across the American southwest. While wildfires rage, the married couple make their way through Nevada, California, Arizona, and Utah, tracing the course of the Colorado River, the aquatic artery on which the Southwest depends for survival. Lewis, an artist working for a prominent land art foundation, is grieving the recent death of his mother, while Eloise is an academic researching the past and future of the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry.Over the course of their trip, Eloise, beginning to suspect she might be pregnant, helplessly witnesses Lewis’s descent as he struggles to find a place for himself in the desert where he never quite felt at home.Elegy, Southwest is a novel which entwines a tragic love story with an intelligent and profound consideration of the way we now live alongside environmental breakdown; an elegy for lost love and for the landscape that makes us.A timely and urgent novel following a young married couple on a road trip through the American southwest as they grapple with the breakdown of their relationship in the shadow of environmental collapse, for fans of Rachel Cusk and Sigrid Nunez.