Prime Minister's Literary Award

From Peter Garrett's desk:

"WINNERS OF 2009 PRIME MINISTER’S LITERARY AWARD

Minister for the Arts Peter Garrett today announced the winners of the fiction and non-fiction categories of the 2009 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

Mr Garrett said the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards were established in 2008 to recognise the importance of Australian literature and to honour talented Australian writers. The winner of each category receives a prize of $100,000.

“The 2009 winners were selected from a fiction shortlist of seven books and the non-fiction shortlist of eight books,” Mr Garrett said.

“The winner of the 2009 Fiction Award is author Nam Le for his debut book of brilliantly crafted short stories, The Boat. This book truly immerses readers in the lives of the characters and their places, cultures and customs as they each navigate their lives.

“The judges recommended this book for the daring scope and excellence of its execution, the generous breadth of its emotional and social traverse, and the excitement generated by every story.

“Two books share the 2009 Non-Fiction Award and the $100,000 prize: House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann by Evelyn Juers and Drawing the Global Colour Line by Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds.”

Evelyn Juers’ book House of Exile traces the story of Heinrich Mann, the writer and brother of Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann, who found refuge in Los Angeles with his wife at a time when Australia was turning away Jews fleeing the Nazis. The judges said House of Exile is exquisitely written with the flow and emotional depth of a fine novel but anchored in deep and original scholarship.

Drawing the Global Colour Line brings a global view of how white racial policies evolved and shows how, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, countries worked together to exclude those defined as not-white.

The judges said it was a privilege to read this remarkable, masterful work. The book makes the racial policies that defined so much of Australian history more comprehensible by linking it to the dynamics of race around the world.

“I congratulate the winners on this significant honour. Each of these outstanding books promises to engage, stir and challenge readers and these are the hallmarks of great literature,” Mr Garrett said.

The Fiction judging panel was comprised of Professor Peter Pierce, Dr Lyn Gallacher and Professor John Hay AC. Phillip Adams AO, Peter Rose and Professor Joan Beaumont make up the Non-Fiction judging panel."

http://www.environment.gov.au/minister

How ironic that the Prime Ministers Award for Fiction has been awarded to Nam Lee a Vietnamese refugee for his novel The Boat. The final story is a moving account of the fear and deprivations of refugees fleeing for their lives in the hope of a better life in Australia. Nam and his family escaped from Vietnam by boat in 1979, when he was just three months old.

>3 jeniwren:
...in regards as to what is happening to some refugees seeking our shores right now? How very true!

Ironic?

Refugees are in a much better position with Rudd in power then they ever were in Howard.

#5 omaca: Of course you're right but I'm starting to worry about Kevin. He's trying to walk a fine line between being tough and being humane. And how hypocritical is the Opposition on this issue??? Malcolm Turnbull's comments are laughable.

Back to the point: Yes Jenny, very ironic.

I'm part way through Drawing the Global Colour Line. Some of the earnest racism, sometimes explicitly genocidal even while keeping its measured tone, that the authors quote makes it feel like a kind of academic horror movie: I Know What You Did Last Century.

It may be great history, but so far I don't know that I'd call it a great literary work: the prose is generally scholarly-clunky.