Miles Franklin Award

The winner of this year's Miles Franklin Award will be announced on June 18.

The list of five finalists for the Award is mildly controversial because all the writers are men. This is the list:

Breath by Tim Winton
Ice by Louis Nowra
The Pages by Murray Bail
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Wanting by Richard Flanagan

As someone commented, the titles are all very short. All very plain.

My choice for winner is The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, but as I've only read three of the five books I'm not in a position to judge, so let's say I'm barracking for The Slap. Whether it is judged to be the novel of the year which is 'of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases' (as the Award's web page notes), remains to be seen. I would certainly judge it to be of outstanding literary merit (if a wee bit too long) and definitely presenting Australian life in its contemporary phase among some families living in Melbourne. It's an ambitious realist novel with many different voices that move around questions of modern Australian sexual and family identity.