Historical Novel Society Australasia (HNSA), in partnership with Australia’s leading essential building and infrastructure services provider ARA Group, is excited to announce the shortlist for Adult Category of the 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize.
The shortlisted titles for the 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize – Adult Category are:
The Unearthed by Lenny Bartulin (Allen & Unwin)
Women & Children by Tony Birch (University of Queensland Press)
Edenglassie by Melissa Lukashenko (University of Queensland Press)
Congratulations to the talented historical novelists who are in contention for a prize pool of $110,000.
The ARA Historical Novel Prize winners will be announced on 23 October 2024.
Highly Commended status was also awarded to:
The Beauties (Lauren Chater)
A Better Place (Stephen Daisley)
To Sing of War (Catherine McKinnon)
THE JUDGING PANEL
The judging panel for the Adult Category includes Tony Maniaty (Chair), Meenakshi Bharat, Sienna Brown, Catherine Chidgey and Michael Williams.
According to the judging panel: “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.
All three displayed exceptional craft in shaping fictional worlds that engaged us as readers, with vivid and energetic characters and settings, while using a lens onto the past to tackle, in disparate ways, questions of identity and place that resonate with contemporary society. They illuminate the past while also speaking to the present.
That all three novels have Australia as their setting reflects a growing sense that traditional notions of the ‘past’ in this cultural context are in need of re-examination and revision; that two of the three finalists are also First Nations authors adds to this sense of inquiry into Australia’s past. That said, the broad range of historical references among entries – from a wide range of cultures, and eras – displayed a renewed interest generally in negotiating with the past, and revising views of how identity is shaped in historical contexts in fiction.
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 UNEARTHED by LENNY BARTULIN
(Allen & Unwin)
ABOUT LENNY BARTULIN 
The author of five previous novels, Lenny Bartulin’s work has been twice longlisted in the Tasmanian Literary Awards and selected as a Most Anticipated Historical Novel by Oprah Daily in the US. He lives in Hobart with his wife and son.
Quote from Lenny Bartulin
“History holds the present in its hands and the novel is a vital artform in our understanding of how. The ARA Historical Novel Prize is a wonderful and welcome addition to our literary culture, and I am delighted and honoured to have The Unearthed recognised on this year’s shortlist.”
ABOUT THE UNEARTHED
After decades-old human bones are discovered in the Tasmanian wilderness, Antonia Kovács returns home with questions for her father, a retired police inspector in Queenstown.
Meanwhile, Tom Pilar receives news of an inheritance, from a man he barely remembers, one of his father’s friends from the early days, newly arrived in the island and looking for work.
Set amidst the harsh terrain of the timber and ore industries of the west coast, The Unearthed is a haunting novel about the past and its quiet but tenacious grip on the present. It reveals the tragic connections between the disparate lives of post-war migrants and local workers, and the fallibility of memory, the illusion of truths and the repercussions on real lives.
FROM THE JUDGING PANEL
Beautifully crafted in visually poetic prose, Lenny Bartulin’s The Unearthed opens with the discovery of decades-old human bones in the Tasmanian wilderness and time-travels us through the landscapes of Hobart and Queensland. Flowing between a present-day detective mystery and past lives fleeing war-ravaged Croatia, Bartulin skilfully constructs a narrative cobweb of migrant stories ensconced in the harsh terrain of the timber and ore industries of Australia. Embracing childhood memories, he explores notions of obligation, family ties, and communities pressured into unlikely actions and alliances, to produce a bitter-sweet historical crime fiction novel that continues to resonate long after the final page is turned.
WOMEN AND CHILDREN by TONY BIRCH
(University of Queensland Press)
ABOUT TONY BIRCH
Tony Birch is the author of four novels, five short fiction collections, and two poetry books. In 2022 his book, Dark As Last Night was awarded the Christina Stead Literary Prize and the Steele Rudd Literary Award. The book was also shortlisted for the 2022 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction. His most recent book is the novel, Women and Children, (UQP 2023).
A powerful, personal novel about women, children and justice, from one of this country’s most loved and clear-eyed storytellers.
ABOUT WOMEN AND CHILDREN
It’s 1965 and Joe Cluny is living in a working-class suburb with his mum, Marion, and sister, Ruby, spending his days trying to avoid trouble with the nuns at the local Catholic primary school. One evening his Aunty Oona appears on the doorstep, distressed and needing somewhere to stay. As his mum and aunty work out what to do, Joe comes to understand the secrets that the women in his family carry, including on their bodies. Yet their pleas for assistance are met with silence and complicity from all sides. Who will help Joe’s family at their time of need?
Women & Children is a novel about the love and courage between two sisters, and a sudden loss of childhood innocence.
FROM THE JUDGING PANEL
Tony Birch understands the role untold stories and silences play in how we tell our histories: both national and personal. Women & Children is a deeply tender novel that tackles complex subjects like trauma and violence with grace and a deceptively simple prose. Eleven-year-old Joe Cluny and his family come alive on the page and Birch’s depiction of 1960s inner city Melbourne combines the historian’s eye for detail with the ache of lived experience. His approach to Joe’s grandmother Ada’s own secret history captures a chapter in Australia’s past with the power and delicacy that defines the best of historical fiction.
EDENGLASSIE by Melissa Lucashenko
(University of Queensland Press)
ABOUT MELISSA LUCASHENKO
Melissa Lucashenko is a Goorie (Aboriginal) author of Bundjalung and European heritage. Her first novel was published in 1997 and since then her work has received acclaim in many literary awards. Killing Darcy won the Royal Blind Society Award and was shortlisted for an Aurealis award. Her sixth novel, Too Much Lip, won the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Queensland Premier’s Award for a work of State Significance. It was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Stella Prize, two Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, two Queensland Literary Awards and two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Melissa is a Walkley Award winner for her non-fiction, and a founding member of human rights organisation Sisters Inside. She writes about ordinary Australians and the extraordinary lives they lead. Her latest book is Edenglassie.
Quote from Melissa Lucashenko
“I am thrilled and delighted to be shorlisted for the 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize. All my previous books have contained some historical elements, but Edenglassie is my first foray into historical fiction proper. I never dreamed shifting genres would have this wonderful result. The ARA Prize is a powerful tool to help shift the Australian national narrative towards a truer history, one which includes all people on this continent.”
ABOUT EDENGLASSIE
In this epic novel set in Brisbane when First Nations people still outnumber the colonists, award-winning Goorie author Melissa Lucashenko tells two extraordinary stories set five generations apart.
When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice.
Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Granny Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives.
In this brilliant epic, Melissa Lucashenko torches Queensland’s colonial myths, while reimagining an Australian future.
FROM THE JUDGING PANEL
Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie is a fiercely original exploration of Australia’s past and its enduring consequences. Lucashenko’s deft handling of dual timelines illuminates the brutal realities of colonisation while celebrating the resilience of Indigenous cultures. Written with the wit, heart and intelligence that define her work, the novel’s virtuoso storytelling, nuanced characterisation and deep emotional insights make Edenglassie a standout. The climactic ending is a powerful convergence of the novel’s twin threads, offering an intensely moving, revelatory moment that leaves readers to reflect on the impact of history and the possibility of healing and renewal. A bold, timely work that enriches the landscape of historical fiction.
Congratulations are also extended to the novels awarded Highly Commended status:
The Beauties by Lauren Chater (Simon & Schuster)
A Better Place by Stephen Daisley (Text Publishing)
To Sing of War by Catherine McKinnon (HarperCollins Publishers)
About the Prize
The ARA Historical Novel Prize is worth a total of $150,000 in prize monies. The Prize will award $100,000 to the Adult category winner, with an additional $5,000 to be awarded to each of the remaining two shortlisted authors. In the Children and Young Adult (CYA) category, the winner will receive $30,000, while the two shortlisted authors will receive $5,000 each.
The prize is open to novels where the majority of the narrative takes place at least 50 years ago by authors who are Australian or New Zealand citizens or residents.
The ARA Historical Novel Prize has been made possible through the generous patronage of ARA Group.
ABOUT ARA GROUP
ARA Group provides a comprehensive range of building services and products to major customers throughout Australia and New Zealand and – through its workplace giving program, The ARA Endowment Fund – plays a proud and positive role in the community.
The ARA Endowment Fund currently donates 100 per cent of the interest earned annually to The Go Foundation, The Indigenous Literacy Foundation and The David Lynch Foundation.
ARA Group has also sponsored the Historical Novel Society Australasia’s biennial conferences since 2017, is Principal Partner of Sydney Writers’ Festival, the Melbourne Writers Festival, the Monkey Baa Theatre, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Crown Sponsor of the Taronga Zoo and Significant Partner of the Story Factory.
