Historical Novel Society Australasia (HNSA), in partnership with the ARA Group has announced the Longlists for the 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize.

The richest individual literary prize in Australasia, the ARA Historical Novel Prize, has announced its longlist. Open to novels where the majority of the narrative takes place at least 50 years ago, the Historical Novel Society of Australasia (HNSA) has been running the prize since 2020 which includes both Adult and Children and Young Adult (CYA) categories. Previous Adult category winners include Gail Jones (2023), Tom Keneally (2022), and two-time CYA winner Katrina Nannestad (2021, 2022). This year’s prize will be the first awarded since the overall prize pool was increased from $100,000 to $150,000.

HNSA Chair, Elisabeth Storrs, says, ‘The ARA Historical Novel Prize is a true celebration of historical fiction and a real opportunity to encourage readers of all ages to embrace the genre. From tales set in Restoration England, across two World Wars, and China during Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, through to Australian stories of First Nations’ resistance, intergenerational trauma, colonial survivors, and post-war migrants, the longlists demonstrate the power of the genre to recover lost, overlooked or deliberately erased histories‘.

The shortlist will be announced on 2 October, and the winners on 23 October, with a celebratory event in Sydney. For more information please visit the HNSA website.

ADULT LONGLIST

• The Unearthed by Lenny Bartulin – Allen & Unwin
• Women & Children by Tony Birch– University of Queensland Press
• The Beauties by Lauren Chater – Simon & Schuster Publishers
• A Better Place by Stephen Daisley– Text Publishing
• Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville– Text Publishing
• The Visitors by Jane Harrison– HarperCollins Publishers
• The Disappearance Of Astrid Bricard by Natasha Lester – Hachette Australia
• Edenglassie by Melissa Lukashenko – University of Queensland Press
• To Sing of War by Catherine McKinnon – HarperCollins Publishing

CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULT LONGLIST

• Secret Sparrow by Jackie French – HarperCollins Publishers
• The Detective’s Guide to Paris by Nicki Greenberg – Affirm Press
• Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky by Rebecca Lim – Allen & Unwin
• Spies in the Sky by Beverley McWilliams – Pantera Press
• Silver Linings by Katrina Nannestad – ABC Books: An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
• The Fortune Maker by Catherine Norton – HarperCollins Publishers
• Only Two: the loss of the Loch Ard by Jackie Randall – Self-published