Miles Franklin Literary Award

Miles Franklin 2026 · Shortlist

Little World

Little World

Josephine Rowe · 41 when first published

Novel · 144 pages

AIAI-generated summary:In the 1950s the incorruptible body of an unnamed child saint arrives at the home of a retired man in remote north-western Australia, who is not Catholic but takes her in, unaware that she is still conscious.

Miles Franklin 2026 · Shortlist

My Heart at Evening

My Heart at Evening

Konrad Muller

Novel · Historical, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:In Van Diemen's Land in 1832, a troubled emissary is sent from Hobart Town to the colony's far north-west to find out why the surveyor, botanist and artist Henry Hellyer shot himself.

Miles Franklin 2026 · Shortlist

Discipline

Discipline

Randa Abdel-Fattah · 46 when first published

Novel · 256 pages · Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In Sydney in May 2021, as Israel bombs Gaza, the arrest of an Islamic college student who protested against a university's dealings with an arms maker draws in a struggling academic and a young journalist who has just become a mother.

Miles Franklin 2026 · Shortlist

You Must Remember This

You Must Remember This

Sean Wilson

Novel · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Grace, an elderly widow whose memory is failing, keeps forgetting that her husband is dead and wanders out at night, until her daughter Liz must decide whether to move her into care.

Miles Franklin 2026 · Shortlist

First Name Second Name

First Name Second Name

Steve MinOn

Novel · 272 pages · Family, Migration, Satire

AIAI-generated summary:When his sisters ignore his deathbed request to carry his body back to his birthplace in Far North Queensland, Stephen Bolin's corpse rises and makes the journey north from Brisbane alone, by night.

Miles Franklin 2025 · Shortlist

Chinese Postman

Chinese Postman

Brian Castro · 74 when first published

Novel · 262 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Abraham Quin, a thrice-divorced migrant in his seventies, once a postman and a professor, lives alone in the Adelaide Hills and looks back on his life as he writes letters to a woman who has fled the war in Ukraine.

Miles Franklin 2025 · Shortlist

Highway Thirteen

Highway 13

Fiona McFarlane · 46 when first published

Short stories · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Linked stories follow ordinary people whose lives are touched, over decades and continents, by an Australian man's arrest in 1998 for murdering backpackers along a highway.

Miles Franklin 2025 · Shortlist

Compassion

Compassion

Julie Janson

Novel · 372 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In colonial New South Wales in the 1800s, Duringah, also known as Nell James, the outlaw daughter of a Darug hero, lives a violent, roaming life of revenge against the colonisers.

Miles Franklin 2025 · Shortlist

Theory & Practice

Theory & Practice

Michelle de Kretser · 67 when first published

Novel · 192 pages · Love, Autofiction

AIAI-generated summary:In 1986 a young Sri Lankan-born woman arrives in Melbourne to write a thesis on Virginia Woolf and, in bohemian St Kilda, falls for Kit, a man who says his relationship is 'deconstructed'.

Miles Franklin 2025 · Shortlist

Dirt Poor Islanders

Dirt Poor Islanders

Winnie Dunn

Novel · 304 pages · Coming of age, Family, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:Meadow Reed, half-Tongan and half-White, grows up in a close Tongan family in Mount Druitt in Western Sydney and starts to find that her world is bigger than the togetherness she was raised in.

Miles Franklin 2024 · Shortlist

Anam

Anam

André Dao

Novel · 352 pages · Family, Migration, Autofiction

AIAI-generated summary:A young Melbourne lawyer from a Vietnamese family, now an academic at Cambridge with a partner and baby daughter, is haunted by his grandfather's ten years as a political prisoner in Vietnam.

Miles Franklin 2024 · Shortlist

The Bell of the World

The Bell of the World

Gregory Day

Novel · 416 pages · Nature, Historical, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Back in Australia after boarding school in England, troubled young Sarah is sent to live with her eccentric Uncle Ferny on the family's coastal farm, where music, books and the bush bind them together.

Miles Franklin 2024 · Shortlist

Only Sound Remains

Only Sound Remains

Hossein Asgari

Novel · 184 pages · Family, Politics, Love

AIAI-generated summary:An Iranian writer living in exile in Adelaide is visited by his father, who has never left Iran and who tells him of his unrequited love for the poet Forugh Farrokhzad.

Miles Franklin 2024 · Shortlist

Wall

Wall

Jen Craig

Novel · 188 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:An artist comes back to Australia to clear out her late father's house, planning to turn its contents into an installation, and is caught again in the family tangles she thought she had left behind.

Miles Franklin 2023 · Shortlist

Iris

Iris

Fiona Kelly McGregor · 57 when first published

Novel · 464 pages · Historical, Crime, Love

AIAI-generated summary:In late 1932 Iris Webber arrives in Depression-era Sydney with few prospects for a woman and gets by on scams, shoplifting and busking with her accordion, until she meets a young sex worker, Maisie.

Miles Franklin 2023 · Shortlist

Cold Enough for Snow

Cold Enough for Snow

Jessica Au

Novel · 144 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A young woman and her mother, who now live in different cities, meet for an autumn holiday in Japan, travelling by train between galleries and cafés while they talk around the things they leave unsaid.

Miles Franklin 2023 · Shortlist

Hopeless Kingdom

Hopeless Kingdom

Kgshak Akec

Novel · 324 pages · Migration, Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:After fleeing Sudan for Cairo and then Sydney, Akita's family uproots once more, to Geelong, just as eight-year-old Akita starts to feel at home, and the move begins to tear the family apart.

Miles Franklin 2023 · Shortlist

Limberlost

Limberlost

Robbie Arnott · 33 when first published

Novel · 240 pages · Family, Nature, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:On his family's apple orchard in northern Tasmania, with his two older brothers away at war, young Ned spends a long summer shooting rabbits to sell the pelts and buy a boat of his own.

Miles Franklin 2023 · Shortlist

The Lovers

The Lovers

Yumna Kassab

Novel · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Jamila is rich and impulsive, Amir a cautious widower without money; drawn together as opposites, they try to hold on to each other against family expectations and the gaps of culture and class.

Miles Franklin 2022 · Shortlist

One Hundred Days

One Hundred Days

Alice Pung · 40 when first published

Novel · 256 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Pregnant at sixteen, Karuna is locked by her overprotective mother inside their flat on the fourteenth floor of a Melbourne public-housing tower, to stop any more trouble before the baby arrives.

Miles Franklin 2022 · Shortlist

The Other Half of You

The Other Half of You

Michael Mohammed Ahmad

Novel · Love, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Raised to wed a suitable girl, Bani Adam, the first of his Western Sydney Muslim family to study at university, later writes to his son about the choices others made for him and those he made himself.

Miles Franklin 2022 · Shortlist

Grimmish

Grimmish

Michael Winkler · 55 when first published

Novel · 222 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Moving between the present day and 1908–09, when the Italian-American boxer Joe Grim toured Australia losing bouts but shrugging off any beating, the book turns his story into an inquiry into pain and manhood.

Miles Franklin 2022 · Shortlist

Scary Monsters

Scary Monsters

Michelle de Kretser · 64 when first published

Novel · 320 pages · Migration, Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:Two Asian migrants to Australia tell their stories from either end of a reversible book: Lili, teaching English in the south of France in the 1980s, and Lyle, a government worker in a near-future Australia where Islam is banned.

Miles Franklin 2021 · Shortlist

Lucky's

Lucky's

Andrew Pippos

Novel · 368 pages · Family, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:The story of Lucky, a Greek-Australian whose once-thriving chain of cafés has shrunk to a single restaurant, and of the people tied to him across the twentieth century by family, chance and deception.

Miles Franklin 2021 · Shortlist

Amnesty

Amnesty

Aravind Adiga · 46 when first published

Novel · 352 pages · Migration, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Danny, a Sri Lankan living illegally in Sydney who cleans houses and sleeps in the back room of a shop, hears that a woman he cleans for has been killed and thinks he knows the culprit.

Miles Franklin 2021 · Shortlist

At the Edge of the Solid World

At the Edge of the Solid World

Daniel Davis Wood · 37 when first published

Novel · Family

AIAI-generated summary:High in the snowbound Swiss Alps, a couple come apart after their first child dies, while back in Sydney an outsider carries out a violent attack that makes headlines around the world.

Miles Franklin 2021 · Shortlist

The Inland Sea

The Inland Sea

Madeleine Watts

Novel · 256 pages · Coming of age, Nature

AIAI-generated summary:Fresh out of university in Sydney, a young woman takes a part-time job answering emergency calls, passing on reports of bushfires and floods from across Australia while her own life falls apart.

Miles Franklin 2021 · Shortlist

The Rain Heron

The Rain Heron

Robbie Arnott · 31 when first published

Novel · Speculative, Nature

AIAI-generated summary:In a country wrecked by a coup, Ren lives alone high on a forested mountain, hunting, trading and trying to forget, until a young soldier arrives searching for a creature out of local legend.

Miles Franklin 2020 · Shortlist

Exploded View

Exploded View

Carrie Tiffany · 54 when first published

Novel · 192 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Late in the 1970s, on the outskirts of Perth, a girl who refuses to speak spends her days among car engines while a threatening new man in the household runs an illegal repair business behind the house.

Miles Franklin 2020 · Shortlist

No One

No One

John Hughes

Novel · 157 pages · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Driving past Sydney's Redfern Station before dawn, a man hears something hit his car; returning, he finds nobody on the street, only a dent high up on the door and a stain that might be blood.

Miles Franklin 2020 · Shortlist

Islands

Islands

Peggy Frew · 43 when first published

Novel · 320 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Wrapped up in the slow collapse of their marriage, Helen and John fail to see how their daughters are suffering, until fifteen-year-old Anna goes out one night and does not come home.

Miles Franklin 2020 · Shortlist

The Returns

The Returns

Philip Salom · 69 when first published

Novel · 336 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Elizabeth, a reclusive book editor in North Melbourne, advertises a room in Trevor's bookshop and is startled when Trevor, a newly separated bookseller in middle age, applies for it himself.

Miles Franklin 2020 · Shortlist

The White Girl

The White Girl

Tony Birch · 62 when first published

Novel · 272 pages · Historical, Family, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In 1960s rural Australia, Odette Brown has kept her granddaughter Sissy out of sight of the authorities, until a new policeman comes to town intent on applying the laws that take light-skinned Aboriginal children away.

Miles Franklin 2019 · Shortlist

The Death of Noah Glass

The Death of Noah Glass

Gail Jones · 63 when first published

Novel · 336 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Just back from Sicily, an art historian is found dead in the pool of his Sydney apartment block, and his two grown children must face both their grief and a police inquiry into a sculpture stolen in Palermo.

Miles Franklin 2019 · Shortlist

A Sand Archive

A Sand Archive

Gregory Day

Novel · 320 pages · Nature

AIAI-generated summary:A young writer gathering stories about Victoria's Great Ocean Road finds a forgotten manual by FB Herschell, an engineer who wrote about sand with strange poetry, and grows fascinated by the man himself.

Miles Franklin 2019 · Shortlist

Dyschronia

Dyschronia

Jennifer Mills · 41 when first published

Novel · 368 pages · Speculative, Nature

AIAI-generated summary:Residents of a small Australian seaside town wake one day to discover that the ocean has disappeared; one of them, Sam, has foreseen this catastrophe in visions since she was a girl.

Miles Franklin 2019 · Shortlist

The Lebs

The Lebs

Michael Mohammed Ahmad

Novel · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:At Punchbowl Boys High in western Sydney, Bani Adam, a Lebanese Australian teenager with romantic dreams, feels out of place among the classmates who rule the school and seem not to care about anything.

Miles Franklin 2019 · Shortlist

A Stolen Season

A Stolen Season

Rodney Hall · 83 when first published

Novel · 352 pages · War

AIAI-generated summary:Three lives knocked off course: a soldier home from Iraq who depends on a mechanical skeleton, a dance teacher who flees after her husband lies to dangerous people, and a wealthy man handed a late inheritance.

Miles Franklin 2018 · Shortlist

Storyland

Storyland

Catherine McKinnon · 59 when first published

Novel · Historical, Nature

AIAI-generated summary:Over four centuries on the shores of Lake Illawarra, linked stories follow a cabin boy sailing with Bass and Flinders in 1796, a brutal ex-convict, a dairy farmer in 1900, a girl rafting in 1998 and a woman in 2033.

Miles Franklin 2018 · Shortlist

The Last Garden

The Last Garden

Eva Hornung · 53 when first published

Novel · 224 pages

AIAI-generated summary:In Wahrheit, a community of exiles waiting for the Messiah, a boy returns from boarding school on the day his father kills his mother and himself, and goes to live among the animals in the barn.

Miles Franklin 2018 · Shortlist

No More Boats

No More Boats

Felicity Castagna

Novel · 223 pages · Migration, Family, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In 2001, as a ship carrying hundreds of rescued refugees waits off the Australian coast, an Italian migrant forced into retirement in western Sydney is told by the ghost of a dead friend to paint an anti-refugee slogan across his yard.

Miles Franklin 2018 · Shortlist

Border Districts

Border Districts

Gerald Murnane · 78 when first published

Novel · 164 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Leaving a capital city behind, an ageing man settles in an out-of-the-way town near the border to spend his last years reviewing the images his mind has kept from a life of reading, loving and believing.

Miles Franklin 2018 · Shortlist

Taboo

Taboo

Kim Scott · 60 when first published

Novel · 287 pages · Historical, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Invited by an elderly white farmer, a group of Noongar people return to a taboo place in the south-west of Western Australia: the site on his family's land where their ancestors were massacred.

Miles Franklin 2017 · Shortlist

An Isolated Incident

An Isolated Incident

Emily Maguire · 40 when first published

Novel · 343 pages · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:When twenty-five-year-old Bella Michaels is killed in the country town of Strathdee, her older sister Chris, who tends bar at the town's pub, is caught at the centre of a media storm.

Miles Franklin 2017 · Shortlist

The Last Days of Ava Langdon

The Last Days of Ava Langdon

Mark O'Flynn

Novel · 224 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Twenty years after her acclaimed novel, the writer Ava Langdon lives as a recluse in the Blue Mountains, keeping pet rats and a typewriter, dressing in men's clothes, a machete at her belt, and speaking French to puzzled locals.

Miles Franklin 2017 · Shortlist

Waiting

Waiting

Philip Salom · 66 when first published

Novel · 345 pages

AIAI-generated summary:In a boarding house in inner Melbourne, a big cross-dresser called Big and a small companion called Little live by long routine, until Little's expected inheritance sets off dreams of owning a home.

Miles Franklin 2017 · Shortlist

Their Brilliant Careers

Their Brilliant Careers

Ryan O'Neill · 41 when first published

Novel · 240 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Sixteen mock biographies of invented Australian writers, from a racist bestselling science-fiction author to a master of outback yarns who never left Sydney, whose lives cross and connect.

Miles Franklin 2016 · Shortlist

The Natural Way of Things

The Natural Way of Things

Charlotte Wood · 50 when first published

Novel · 315 pages · Speculative, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Two young women come round from sedation to discover they are captives, along with eight others, on a derelict property in the Australian outback, shaven-headed and watched over by two men and a supposed nurse.

Miles Franklin 2016 · Shortlist

Salt Creek

Salt Creek

Lucy Treloar

Novel · 405 pages · Historical, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In 1855 the once-wealthy Finch family moves to Salt Creek on the remote Coorong coast of South Australia, where fifteen-year-old Hester and her siblings form ties with passing travellers and the Ngarrindjeri people whose land they have taken.

Miles Franklin 2016 · Shortlist

Leap

Leap

Myfanwy Jones

Novel · 336 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Unable to forgive himself for one tragic summer night, Joe drifts between dead-end jobs and trains his body relentlessly, while across the city Elise, whose marriage is failing, takes refuge sketching the tigers at the zoo.

Miles Franklin 2016 · Shortlist

Hope Farm

Hope Farm

Peggy Frew · 39 when first published

Novel · 352 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In the winter of 1985, thirteen-year-old Silver moves with her mother Ishtar and Ishtar's charismatic new lover Miller to a run-down hippie commune in rural Australia.

Miles Franklin 2015 · Shortlist

After Darkness

After Darkness

Christine Piper · 35 when first published

Novel · 297 pages · Historical, War

AIAI-generated summary:In 1942 a Japanese doctor at a hospital in Broome is taken into custody as a wartime enemy and interned at a camp in the remote South Australian outback.

Miles Franklin 2015 · Shortlist

Tree Palace

Tree Palace

Craig Sherborne · 52 when first published

Novel · 288 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A makeshift family of drifters, squatting in empty houses in rural Victoria and selling off their old fittings, finally finds a place to settle, until fifteen-year-old Zara turns out to be pregnant.

Miles Franklin 2015 · Shortlist

The Golden Age

The Golden Age

Joan London · 66 when first published

Novel · Migration, Love, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:In 1954 Frank Gold, a thirteen-year-old refugee from Hungary who has caught polio in Australia, relearns how to walk at a children's convalescent home in Perth, where he falls for a fellow patient, Elsa.

Miles Franklin 2015 · Shortlist

Golden Boys

Golden Boys

Sonya Hartnett · 46 when first published

Novel · 256 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:When the Jensons move to a working-class suburb and the father showers his sons with toys and bikes, the local children see Rex Jenson as a hero, but his elder son, Colt, sees something else.

Miles Franklin 2014 · Shortlist

The Swan Book

The Swan Book

Alexis Wright · 63 when first published

Novel · 340 pages · Speculative, Politics, Nature

AIAI-generated summary:In a future Australia ravaged by climate change, a mute Aboriginal girl, Oblivia, is raised by an eccentric old woman in the hull of a grounded warship, in a swan-filled swamp used to detain Aboriginal people.

Miles Franklin 2014 · Shortlist

My Beautiful Enemy

My Beautiful Enemy

Cory Taylor · 58 when first published

Novel · 256 pages · War, Love, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:During the Second World War, Arthur Wheeler, a guard at an enemy alien camp in Victoria, falls for a young Japanese internee and leaves his wife and baby son to try to save him from deportation.

Miles Franklin 2014 · Shortlist

The Night Guest

The Night Guest

Fiona McFarlane · 35 when first published

Novel

AIAI-generated summary:Ruth, an elderly widow living alone by the sea in New South Wales, wakes believing a tiger has been in her house; that day Frida, a formidable stranger who says she has come to care for her, arrives.

Miles Franklin 2014 · Shortlist

Eyrie

Eyrie

Tim Winton · 53 when first published

Novel · 432 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Divorced, jobless and disgraced, Tom Keely hides from the world in a flat at the top of a grim high-rise in Fremantle, until he runs into a woman from his past and her unusual young son.

Miles Franklin 2013 · Shortlist

The Beloved

The Beloved

Annah Faulkner · 63 when first published

Novel · 313 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Left lame by polio as a young child, Bertie Lightfoot longs to be an artist; after her family moves to Port Moresby in 1955, she defies her demanding mother to paint in secret.

Miles Franklin 2013 · Shortlist

Mateship with Birds

Mateship with Birds

Carrie Tiffany · 47 when first published

Novel · 224 pages · Love, Nature

AIAI-generated summary:Near a small country town in the early 1950s, a lonely dairy farmer watches a family of kookaburras through his binoculars, while the single mother next door watches him.

Miles Franklin 2013 · Shortlist

The Mountain

The Mountain

Drusilla Modjeska · 66 when first published

Novel · 432 pages · Love, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In 1968, with Papua New Guinea on the brink of independence, an English filmmaker and his Dutch wife, Rika, arrive to film a remote mountain village whose bark-cloth paintings captivate her.

Miles Franklin 2013 · Shortlist

Floundering

Floundering

Romy Ash

Novel · 224 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:A year after leaving her sons with their grandparents, Loretta turns up without warning, takes eleven-year-old Tom and his older brother Jordy, and drives them west across Australia in the summer heat.

Miles Franklin 2012 · Shortlist

Past the Shallows

Past the Shallows

Favel Parrett · 37 when first published

Novel · 254 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:On Tasmania's remote south coast, three brothers grow up under the moods of their father, a bitter fisherman, while the youngest, Harry, finds comfort in small treasures and a secret friendship.

Miles Franklin 2012 · Shortlist

Cold Light

Cold Light

Frank Moorhouse · 73 when first published

Novel · 704 pages · Historical, Politics · Edith Trilogy, book 3

AIAI-generated summary:In 1950, with the League of Nations gone and its veterans shut out of the United Nations, Edith Campbell Berry comes home to Canberra and waits for a call to become Australia's first woman ambassador.

Miles Franklin 2012 · Shortlist

Foal's Bread

Foal's Bread

Gillian Mears · 47 when first published

Novel · 361 pages · Historical, Family, Love

AIAI-generated summary:In the hard farming country of northern New South Wales between the world wars, two generations of the Nancarrow family live by the land and by their horses on the country show high-jumping circuit.

Miles Franklin 2012 · Shortlist

Blood

Blood

Tony Birch · 54 when first published

Novel · 272 pages · Coming of age, Family, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Thirteen-year-old Jesse has sworn to protect his little sister, Rachel, as their reckless mother drags them from one bad situation to the next along Australia's back roads.

Miles Franklin 2011 · Shortlist

Bereft

Bereft

Chris Womersley · 42 when first published

Novel · 264 pages · Historical, Crime, War

AIAI-generated summary:In 1919, as Spanish flu closes schools and state borders, a soldier back from the war creeps home to the New South Wales town he fled ten years earlier, accused of killing his young sister.

Miles Franklin 2011 · Shortlist

When Colts Ran

When Colts Ran

Roger McDonald · 69 when first published

Novel · 346 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Over several decades in the Isabel, a stretch of Australian sheep country, the restless Kingsley Colts drifts in and out of the lives of the men around him: prospectors, stock dealers, misfits and dreamers.

Miles Franklin 2010 · Shortlist

Lovesong

Lovesong

Alex Miller · 73 when first published

Novel · 354 pages · Love, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:An ageing writer back in Melbourne befriends the husband of the Tunisian woman who runs a local patisserie, and hears how the couple met in a Paris café years before and what has strained their marriage since.

Miles Franklin 2010 · Shortlist

The Bath Fugues

The Bath Fugues

Brian Castro · 59 when first published

Novel · 374 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Three linked novellas follow a former art forger in his old age, an addicted Portuguese poet who collects art, and a doctor with a gallery of her own on the tropical coast of Queensland.

Miles Franklin 2010 · Shortlist

Jasper Jones

Jasper Jones

Craig Silvey · 27 when first published

Novel · 299 pages · Coming of age, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:On a hot night in 1965 a bookish thirteen-year-old in a Western Australian mining town is woken by the town's mixed-race outcast, who begs for help and leads him into the bush to a terrible discovery.

Miles Franklin 2010 · Shortlist

The Book of Emmett

The Book of Emmett

Deborah Forster

Novel · 304 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:In working-class Footscray in the Menzies era, five children grow up in the shadow of their father, a drinking, gambling would-be poet whose rages terrorise the family.

Miles Franklin 2010 · Shortlist

Butterfly

Butterfly

Sonya Hartnett · 41 when first published

Novel · 214 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In the Australian suburbs a girl about to turn fourteen, ashamed of her body and afraid of her fickle friends, is befriended by a glamorous neighbour, while her two beloved older brothers head towards trouble.

Miles Franklin 2009 · Shortlist

The Slap

The Slap

Christos Tsiolkas · 43 when first published

Novel · 485 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:At a barbecue in the suburbs, a man hits someone else's misbehaving child, and the blow sends shock waves through the friends and relatives who saw it, each forced to take a side.

Miles Franklin 2009 · Shortlist

Ice

Ice

Louis Nowra · 58 when first published

Novel · 322 pages · Historical, Love

AIAI-generated summary:An iceberg towed into colonial Sydney turns out to hold a long-dead sailor, frozen intact; in present-day Sydney, a man whose wife, a biographer, is in a coma digs into the life of the entrepreneur behind it.

Miles Franklin 2009 · Shortlist

The Pages

The Pages

Murray Bail · 67 when first published

Novel

AIAI-generated summary:A philosopher from Sydney drives out to a sheep station in western New South Wales to judge the unread life's work of a recluse who wrote in a shed, taking along a psychoanalyst friend.

Miles Franklin 2009 · Shortlist

Wanting

Wanting

Richard Flanagan · 47 when first published

Novel · 256 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In Van Diemen's Land the governor Sir John Franklin and his wife adopt a young Aboriginal girl to prove she can be civilised; years later in England, Charles Dickens is drawn into the fate of Franklin's lost Arctic expedition.

Miles Franklin 2008 · Shortlist

Landscape of Farewell

Landscape of Farewell

Alex Miller · 71 when first published

Novel · 279 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A widowed German historian who thinks his life is over is challenged at his farewell lecture by a young Aboriginal academic, and her invitation to Australia leads him into friendship with her uncle, an Aboriginal elder.

Miles Franklin 2008 · Shortlist

The Fern Tattoo

The Fern Tattoo

David Brooks · 54 when first published

Novel · 374 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Summoned by an elderly woman who knew his mother, a man is drawn in by her stories, until he realises that the family history she is telling is his own.

Miles Franklin 2008 · Shortlist

Sorry

Sorry

Gail Jones · 52 when first published

Novel · 218 pages · Historical, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:In the remote north-west of Australia an English anthropologist and his unstable wife raise a lonely daughter, who forms a sister-like bond with an Aboriginal girl before a violent death tears their lives apart.

Miles Franklin 2008 · Shortlist

Love Without Hope

Love Without Hope

Rodney Hall · 72 when first published

Novel · 271 pages

AIAI-generated summary:After a bushfire kills her beloved horses, an elderly countrywoman sinks into depression and squalor, and in 1982 she is committed to an asylum in rural New South Wales, where she must fight to stay sane.

Miles Franklin 2007 · Shortlist

Careless

Careless

Deborah Robertson · 47 when first published

Novel · 293 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:In Fremantle an eight-year-old girl minds her little brother and her moody mother, until a summer's day brings a tragedy whose effects reach a recently widowed woman and a young artist hungry for fame.

Miles Franklin 2007 · Shortlist

Dreams of Speaking

Dreams of Speaking

Gail Jones · 51 when first published

Novel · 213 pages

AIAI-generated summary:In Paris to write about the hidden poetry of modern machines, a solitary young Australian woman befriends an elderly Japanese man who lived through Nagasaki's bombing and knows everything about Alexander Graham Bell.

Miles Franklin 2007 · Shortlist

Theft: A Love Story

Theft: A Love Story

Peter Carey · 63 when first published

Novel · 269 pages · Love, Crime, Satire

AIAI-generated summary:A once-famous Sydney painter, now broke, drinking and minding a patron's country house in New South Wales with his volatile, overgrown brother, is visited one stormy night by a stylish American woman who talks of a valuable painting next door.

Miles Franklin 2006 · Shortlist

The Wing of Night

The Wing of Night

Brenda Walker · 48 when first published

Novel · 288 pages · War, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In 1915 two women in Western Australia, one from careless wealth and one from poverty, see their men sail from Fremantle with the Light Horse for the war, and the fighting at Gallipoli.

Miles Franklin 2006 · Shortlist

The Garden Book

The Garden Book

Brian Castro · 55 when first published

Novel · 316 pages · Historical, Love

AIAI-generated summary:In Victoria's Dandenong Ranges in the 1920s and 1930s, a schoolteacher's daughter from a Chinese Australian family marries a violent man and falls in love with an American flyer.

Miles Franklin 2006 · Shortlist

Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living

Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living

Carrie Tiffany · 40 when first published

Novel · 256 pages · Historical, Love

AIAI-generated summary:In 1930s Victoria, a sewing teacher on a government train that tours the countryside with farming advice marries a soil expert, and together they buy land in the dry Mallee.

Miles Franklin 2006 · Shortlist

The Secret River

The Secret River

Kate Grenville · 55 when first published

Novel · 334 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In 1806 a London waterman's mistake gets him shipped to New South Wales for life with his family, and he lays claim to land on the Hawkesbury where Aboriginal people already live.

Also: Booker 2006 shortlist

Miles Franklin 2005 · Shortlist

The Submerged Cathedral

The Submerged Cathedral

Charlotte Wood · 39 when first published

Novel · 302 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Beginning in 1963, a man and a woman share a love that endures through sacrifice, loss and a rivalry between sisters, in a story that crosses Australia and passes through European cities.

Miles Franklin 2005 · Shortlist

Sixty Lights

Sixty Lights

Gail Jones · 49 when first published

Novel · 249 pages · Historical, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:In Victorian times, a girl entranced by light and by photography, then a novelty, grows up in Australia and then lives in England and Bombay, seeing her life as a series of images.

Miles Franklin 2005 · Shortlist

Salt Rain

Salt Rain

Sarah Armstrong · 36 when first published

Novel · 218 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:When her mother vanishes on Sydney Harbour, fourteen-year-old Allie is taken north by an aunt she hardly knows to the run-down dairy farm in a rainforest valley where her mother grew up.

Miles Franklin 2005 · Shortlist

The Gift of Speed

The Gift of Speed

Steven Carroll · 55 when first published

Novel · 353 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In the summer of 1960–61, as the West Indies cricket team tours Australia, a cricket-mad sixteen-year-old in an outer Melbourne suburb dreams that speed will carry him out into the wider world.

Miles Franklin 2004 · Shortlist

Slow Water

Slow Water

Annamarie Jagose · 38 when first published

Novel · 340 pages · Historical, Love

AIAI-generated summary:In 1836 an English clergyman sails from London for the missions of northern New Zealand, and during the long voyage he is drawn into a love affair that will put him in danger.

Also: NZ Book Awards 2004 ★ winner

Miles Franklin 2004 · Shortlist

Seven Types of Ambiguity

Seven Types of Ambiguity

Elliot Perlman · 39 when first published

Novel · 607 pages · Love, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:An unemployed teacher who has loved one woman for years without return finally does something about it, and his act has consequences that he and his psychiatrist never saw coming.

Miles Franklin 2004 · Shortlist

Elizabeth Costello

Elizabeth Costello

J. M. Coetzee · 63 when first published

Novel · 240 pages

AIAI-generated summary:An ageing Australian novelist, famous above all for one early book, travels the world to give lectures and accept honours, and finds that she has become the object of other people's scrutiny.

Miles Franklin 2004 · Shortlist

My Life as a Fake

My Life as a Fake

Peter Carey · 60 when first published

Novel · 280 pages

AIAI-generated summary:In Kuala Lumpur in 1972, an English poetry editor meets a disgraced Australian literary hoaxer whose manuscript she believes is a work of genius, but he insists that she first hear his story.

Miles Franklin 2004 · Shortlist

Three Dog Night

Three Dog Night

Peter Goldsworthy · 52 when first published

Novel · 341 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:A psychiatrist comes home to Adelaide with his wife after ten happy years in London and introduces her to his oldest friend, a once-brilliant surgeon who is no longer allowed to practise.

Miles Franklin 2003 · Shortlist

The Prosperous Thief

The Prosperous Thief

Andrea Goldsmith · 52 when first published

Novel · 291 pages · Historical, War, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Born in 1910 in the slums of Berlin, Heinrik Heck has nothing in common with the Lewins, a cultured Jewish family near Düsseldorf, until Hitler's rise and an act outside Belsen at the war's end bind the two families together.

Miles Franklin 2003 · Shortlist

Wild Surmise

Wild Surmise

Dorothy Porter · 48 when first published

Novel · 293 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:An astronomer who looks for life on frozen moons has grown distant from her dying husband, and then Phoebe, a cool and self-assured woman from her past, comes back into her world.

Miles Franklin 2003 · Shortlist

Moral Hazard

Moral Hazard

Kate Jennings · 54 when first published

Novel · Love

AIAI-generated summary:In mid-1990s New York, an Australian-born left-wing writer takes a speechwriting job at a Wall Street investment bank to pay for the care of her husband, who has Alzheimer's disease.

Miles Franklin 2003 · Shortlist

Of a Boy

Of a Boy

Sonya Hartnett · 34 when first published

Novel · 188 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In 1977 in suburban Australia, nine-year-old Adrian, removed from his mother and not wanted by his father, lives with a tired grandmother and a withdrawn uncle, while three local children who went out for a treat have disappeared.

Miles Franklin 2003 · Shortlist

An Angel in Australia

An Angel in Australia

Thomas Keneally · 67 when first published

Novel · 336 pages · Historical, Crime, War

AIAI-generated summary:In wartime Sydney, as the city fears a Japanese invasion and American servicemen arrive, a naive young Catholic priest tries to do right by the troubled people of his suburban parish.

Miles Franklin 2002 · Shortlist

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

Joan London · 53 when first published

Novel · 256 pages · Historical, War, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In 1937 two young men returning from a dig in Iraq call at a small farm in Australia's far south-west, where Edith, seventeen, lives with her sister and mother, and fill her head with stories, among them the epic of Gilgamesh.

Miles Franklin 2002 · Shortlist

The Architect

The Architect

John A. Scott · 53 when first published

Novel · 172 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Andrew Martin, a celebrated young Australian architect, has long revered Johannes Von Ruhland, an ageing genius whose designs were never built; meeting him at last in Berlin seems a dream come true.

Miles Franklin 2002 · Shortlist

Gould's Book of Fish

Gould's Book of Fish

Richard Flanagan · 40 when first published

Novel · 404 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In 1828 William Buelow Gould, an English convict, forger and liar sent to a brutal penal settlement in Van Diemen's Land, is put to work by the prison surgeon painting the island's fish.

Miles Franklin 2002 · Shortlist

The Art of the Engine Driver

The Art of the Engine Driver

Steven Carroll · 52 when first published

Novel · 278 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:On a hot summer evening in a new outer suburb of Melbourne, the engine driver Vic, his wife Rita and their son Michael walk down their street to a neighbour's engagement party, to which the whole street is invited.

Miles Franklin 2001 · Shortlist

Conditions of Faith

Conditions of Faith

Alex Miller · 64 when first published

Novel · 352 pages · Historical, Love

AIAI-generated summary:In 1923 Emily Stanton, a gifted young graduate in Melbourne, impulsively marries an older Scottish-French engineer and moves with him to Paris, where she soon finds married life stifling.

Miles Franklin 2001 · Shortlist

The Company

The Company

Arabella Edge

Novel · 371 pages · Historical, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:In 1629 the Dutch East India Company's flagship Batavia is wrecked on a reef off Western Australia, and Jeronimus Cornelisz, an apothecary fleeing Amsterdam, takes charge of the survivors stranded on a barren island.

Miles Franklin 2001 · Shortlist

Life After George

Life After George

Hannie Rayson · 43 when first published

Drama · 80 pages · Politics

AIAI-generated summary:When the charismatic professor Peter George is killed in a plane crash, his widow, his two former wives and his daughter come together for the funeral and look back on their lives with him.

Miles Franklin 2001 · Shortlist

English Passengers

English Passengers

Matthew Kneale · 40 when first published

Novel · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In 1857 a Manx smuggling captain charters his ship to two Englishmen bound for Tasmania: a vicar seeking the Garden of Eden and a doctor with a sinister theory of race, while an Aboriginal man recounts his people's struggle.

Also: Booker 2000 shortlist

Miles Franklin 2001 · Shortlist

True History of the Kelly Gang

True History of the Kelly Gang

Peter Carey · 57 when first published

Novel · 401 pages · Historical, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:On the run from the police in colonial Victoria, the bushranger Ned Kelly writes the story of his life for the daughter he has never seen, in unpunctuated, half-schooled prose.

Also: Booker 2001 ★ winner

Miles Franklin 2001 · Shortlist

The Day We Had Hitler Home

The Day We Had Hitler Home

Rodney Hall · 65 when first published

Novel · 351 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In 1919 a young German soldier, gassed blind and unable to speak, ends up by mistake among Australia's returning troops and comes ashore with them in a small New South Wales harbour town.

Miles Franklin 2000 · Shortlist

Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop

Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop

Amy Witting · 81 when first published

Novel · 352 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Poor, hungry and trying to live by writing in Sydney, Isobel Callaghan is afraid her mind is giving way; she collapses while out to buy food and wakes in hospital, bound for a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Blue Mountains.

Miles Franklin 2000 · Shortlist

What a Piece of Work

What a Piece of Work

Dorothy Porter · 45 when first published

Novel · 276 pages

AIAI-generated summary:In late-1960s Sydney, the psychiatrist Peter Cyren, new superintendent of the Callan Park mental hospital, tells in verse of his efforts to cure the minds in his care, and of a life that goes from bad to far worse.

Miles Franklin 2000 · Shortlist

Too Many Men

Too Many Men

Lily Brett · 53 when first published

Novel · 714 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A New York businesswoman, raised in Australia by Holocaust survivors, travels with her eighty-year-old father to Poland, where he grew up and was imprisoned, and finds herself in conversation with the long-dead Nazi Rudolf Höss.