The Historical Novel Society Australasia (HNSA), in partnership with Australia’s leading essential building and infrastructure services provider ARA Group, have announced the Shortlists for the 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize.
The ARA Historical Novel Prize is a literary prize that recognises the best Australian and New Zealand works of historical fiction.
With prize monies worth $150,000, the ARA Historical Novel Prize is the richest literary award in Australia and New Zealand. The Prize includes a category for outstanding Children and Young Adult (CYA) literature, in addition to the Adult category. The Prize 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 receives $30,000, while the two short listers receive $5,000 each.
According to the Chair, Tony Maniaty: ‘Choosing this year’s shortlist from an outstanding longlist of nine novels proved challenging, but ultimately three works stood out for the high quality of their writing and their refreshing and often innovative approach to handling of history. Unanimously the judges nominated these three novels as finalists.
The sheer inventiveness of the three finalists also sets them apart. All exemplify the novel in its modern form, venturing into the complexities of the past in quite different and exciting ways, while breaking literary conventions. With often surprising turns, the genres of crime, Indigenous history and social realism are porously blended here into fresh forms of historical fiction, very effectively connecting past and present.’
The winners will be announced on 23 October. For more information please visit the HNSA website.
Check out the Shortlists below:
Adult Category:
- Edenglassie by Melissa Lukashenko – University of Queensland Press
- The Unearthed by Lenny Bartulin – Allen & Unwin
- Women & Children by Tony Birch– University of Queensland Press
Children and Young Adult (CYA) Category:
- Secret Sparrow by Jackie French – HarperCollins Publishers
- Spies in the Sky by Beverley McWilliams – Pantera Press
- Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky by Rebecca Lim – Allen & Unwin
