ARA HISTORICAL NOVEL PRIZE 2024

With prize money of $150,000, the ARA Historical Novel Prize gives Australian and New Zealand historical novelists the chance to be recognised in a class of their own, with the most significant prize purse for literature in Australasia. The Prize incorporates both an Adult category and a category for Children and Young Adult (CYA).

The ARA Historical Novel Prize now awards $100,000 to the Adult category winner, with an additional $5,000 awarded to each of the remaining two shortlisted authors. In the CYA category, the winner received $30,000, while the two short listers received $5,000 each.

The ARA Historical Novel Prize has been made possible by the generosity of our Foundation Partner, ARA Group. The ARA Group, and its Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Edward Federman, are committed to supporting the arts and literature. They do this in a number of ways – as a Principal Partner of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, the Melbourne Writers Festival, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, the Monkey Baa Theatre, and the Story Factory– and now as the sponsor of this very significant literary prize.

The ARA Historical Novel Prize winners were announced on 23 October 2024.

EDENGLASSIE

The judging panel for the Adult Category included Tony Maniaty (Chair), Meenakshi Bharat, Sienna Brown, Catherine Chidgey and Michael Williams.

According to the Chair, Tony Maniaty: Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie is a fiercely original exploration of Australia’s past and its enduring consequences – an ambitious, epic novel that cracks what the author calls the ‘racist mythmaking’ that has painted Aboriginal people so negatively.

The novel weaves together two powerful streams – 19th century colonialism, and contemporary Indigenous existence in Australia. Lucashenko’s deft handling of these dual timelines illuminates the brutal realities of colonisation while celebrating the resilience of Indigenous cultures. While the novel is geographically specific, and wonderfully so, painting vivid images of South-East Queensland ‘then and now’, there’s a strong sense of the universal, showing the often-tragic impacts of displacement across history.

Lucashenko’s deep research into the colonial history of Moreton Bay in the 1850s shines through, as does the deep love between the towering Mulanyin, arriving from the Nerang region, and Nita, an orphaned Moreton Bay woman who works for family of Tom Petrie, a man of integrity caught up in the culture war of his time.

In the contemporary strand, Edenglassie sees the no-nonsense Eddie Blanket in a Brisbane hospital, attended by her very feisty relative Winona; both become engaged in contemporary Brisbane life, one at a personal level and the other more politically, yet equally with enduring scepticism.

Written with the wit, heart and intelligence that define Lucashenko’s work and here amount to virtuoso storytelling, Edenglassie a timely work that enriches the landscape of historical fiction.

SPIES IN THE SKY

The judging panel for the CYA Category were Anna Ciddor (Chair), Danielle Clode and Lystra Rose.

According to Chair, Anna Ciddor, she and fellow judges, Lystra Rose and Danielle Clode, had no trouble agreeing on the winning title, despite the tough competition. Spies in the Sky by Beverley McWilliams offers everything they could wish for a children’s historical novel. The gripping story arc carries readers through to a satisfying and uplifting ending, and the historical content, based on in-depth research into pigeons used as spies in World War II, is a crucial part of both the plot and the setting, creating a seamless immersive experience. Although Beverley McWilliams tells the story from the pigeons’ point of view, she has made the clever decision not to restrict herself to realistic pigeon behaviour. Instead, her anthropomorphic approach allows the book to explore important themes for children such as friendship issues, learning how to be a team player, courage and empathy. A thought-provoking, enjoyable and uplifting historical novel, exactly right for this age group.