Announcing the 2004 Miles Franklin Literary Award Winner
21 June 2004
Thursday 17 June, 2004
Australia’s most prestigious and richest single literary prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, has been won by SHIRLEY HAZZARD for her novel The Great Fire published by Virago.
Ms Cate Blanchett announced the winner of this Award valued at $42,000 on Thursday 17 June, at a gala Dinner Presentation held in the Miles Franklin Exhibition Room, The Mitchell Galleries, State Library of New South Wales.
Ms Hazzard who has current commitments in Italy, was not able to attend the evening celebrations. However, in her video message, Ms Hazzard said that she was so glad, and so grateful.
“I’ve been proud to be short-listed in the company of writers whose work I hold in high regard. I wish with all my heart I could be present.
I’ve been thinking about Miles Franklin, who used a man’s name, in accord with the exigencies of her time – but was no more a man than was Henry Handel Richardson, or George Eliot, or those three Bell brothers, whose true and sisterly name was Brontë. Some things do change for the better, over the long literary haul, and the changes of cultural Australia in my lifetime are staggering,” Ms Hazzard said.
The Miles Franklin Literary Award 2004 is the first Australian award Shirley Hazzard has won. The Great Fire is her first novel in 23 years.
Professor Elizabeth Webby, spokesperson for the Judging Panel said that for 2004, the judges have agreed that the novel which best meets these criteria is Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire.
The judges commented in their formal report that in a year when the shortlist for the Award featured novels by writers who have won many of the world’s most prestigious literary prizes, as well as highly distinguished works by younger novelists, the choice was a particularly difficult one.
“The Great Fire stood out for the way in which all of the novelist’s traditional tools - characterisation, scenic description, dialogue – were employed with great skill and subtlety. What was not said became almost as important as what was, with Hazzard trusting readers to fill in the gaps, and so encouraging them to become part of the novel’s imaginative world,” they reported.
Judges for this year’s Award were Dr Kerryn Goldsworthy, David Marr, Mark Rubbo, Professor Elizabeth Webby, and the State Librarian of NSW, Dagmar Schmidmaier.
Other books shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award were J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake, Peter Goldsworthy’s Three Dog Night, Elliot Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, and Annamarie Jagose‘s Slow Water.
44 books were submitted for 2004.
The Miles Franklin Literary Award, incepted in 1954, celebrates Australian character and creativity and nurtures the continuing life of literature based on Australia. It is awarded for the novel of the year which is of the highest literary merit and which presents Australian life in any of its phases.
CAL provided financial support for the promotion of the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2004.
