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AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE: MILES FRANKLIN AWARD

© Joanna Skinner

Australia's premier literary award was handed out for this year on 8 June 2000. The Miles Franklin Award. It was won jointly this year by that great lady of letters, Thea Astley for her book Drylands and a young unknown writer from Western Australia, Kim Scott for his book Benang.

The Sydney Morning Herald of 9 June described these two books thus:

"Thea Astley's Drylands, which depicts the disaffection and alienation of a small town, and Kim Scott's Benang, which "lifts you with its grandness" into the heart of "the first white man born", took out equal honours in the celebrated and often controversial prize.

"...The judges said Drylands was "trademark" Astley. Set in the heart of One Nation territory, it was written with her usual "concision, bite and linguistic verve which brilliantly transcends the darkness" at its heart....

"...Scott, who flew in from Perth yesterday to receive the award, said he was a "little shocked" at his win: "It is hard to realise how something that starts off so private, so solitary, is now so out there in the open. And to be up there with Thea, such a big name."

"Scott said his novel was based on his research into his Nyoongar family history and the writings of A.O. Neville, the chief protector of Aborigines in Western Australia until 1940, about the need to "breed out" the Aboriginal people.

"I realised I was implicated. I realised this meant me. And the anger grew somewhere inside me. It made me wild. I thought to myself, I am Nyoongah, I am going to write about this.

"Neville was a literate person and he used language to tell his ideas. I am a literate person, too. And I am going to use his language and turn it back on itself. I am going to rip his ideas to pieces."

"The judges said Scott's book was "Homeric in its ambitions" and "unsettling in its swirling narrative", which gave "unregarded, powerless lives voice and substance"."

Thea Astley has won this prestigious award four times and this is the second time that she has shared it. There have only been shared awards twice, and each time she has been one of the winners. In 1962, Thea Astley won the prize the first time with her novel The Well Dressed Explorer and shared the prize with George Turner's The Cupboard Under the Stairs.

The Miles Franklin Award is named for the famed Australian author the late Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin and set up under the terms of her will. Stella Franklin died in September 1954. The award is given annually for the novel or play of the highest literary merit, written by an Australian, presenting aspects of Australian life, and published during the preceding year. The award is administered by the Permanent Trustee Co Ltd of Sydney, and is currently worth $28,000.

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