Salonika Burning by Gail Jones
About Gail Jones
Gail Jones is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. She is the author of two short-story collections and nine novels, and her work has been translated into several languages.
She has received numerous literary awards, including the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the Age Book of the Year, the South Australian Premier’s Award, the ALS Gold Medal and the Kibble Award, and has been shortlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, the Prix Femina Étranger. Originally from Western Australia, she now lives
in Sydney.
A Quote from Gail Jones
“The ARA Historical Novel Prize is a generous and important one, and I feel deeply honoured to accept it, especially given the excellent field of books with which Salonika Burning was listed. In my view, imagining historical experience is a dimension of ethics – understanding that the lives of others are as irreducibly complex as our own.”
About Salonika Burning
MACEDONIA, 1917. The great city of Salonika is engulfed by fire as all of Europe is ravaged by war.
Amid the destruction are those who have come to the frontlines to heal: surgeons, ambulance drivers, nurses, orderlies and other volunteers. Four of them – Stella, Olive, Grace and Stanley – are at the centre of Gail Jones’s extraordinary new novel, which takes its inspiration from the wartime experiences of Australians Miles Franklin and Olive King, and British painters Grace Pailthorpe and Stanley Spencer. In Jones’s imagination these four lives intertwine and change, each compelled by the desire to create something meaningful in the ruins of a broken world.
Immersive and gripping, Salonika Burning illuminates not only the devastation of war but also the vast social upheaval of the times. It shows Gail Jones to be at the height of her powers.
Judges Report
The 2023 judging panel for the Adult category included Dr Robert Gott (Chair), Dr Renée Otmar and Lucy Treloar.
According to the panel, “In Salonika Burning, Gail Jones has created a compelling narrative. The novel is set in the second great Ottoman city of Salonika, a cosmopolitan world in which operations for allied forces had converged. On 18 August 1917, a spark from a homemade stove ignited a fire that blazed for 32 hours, destroying two-thirds of the city.”
“The story is told through the refracted gaze of four real-life witnesses to the conflagration – Stella, Olive, Grace and Stanley – as they strive independently to find meaning and their own place in the world. There is a haunting frailty in their responses, even as they reach for fleeting moments of joy and beauty, through art, romance, love and intimacy. The prose is powerful and poetic, offering a deep and stunning critique of the terrors of war.”
“Readers expecting depictions of horrific trench warfare will find instead an entirely fresh perspective on the First World War, the exquisitely drawn characters and settings, and subtle imagery and writing that distinguishes a Gail Jones novel.”
“Jones asks not only what happened, but how individuals, artists and storytellers, create order from the fragments of destruction. She imaginatively enters and explores the minds of these historical figures with psychological acuity, each character fully inhabited as a strand that, braided with others, tells a greater truth about history, war and its meanings.”
“What at first glance might seem dispassionate, rises from a profound attentiveness to human behaviour, to our individual strangeness and collective responses, and invites readers to wonder and reflect on our own uncertain times. How do we as individuals and communities react in times of crisis? What stories do we tell about them?”
“Gail Jones’s skill is everywhere in this novel: in the fragmentary structure and in the energy that rises from its seeming contradictions. It is at once ruminative and precise, expansive and condensed, cool and intimate. Salonika Burning is an astonishing work of historical fiction, which is why the judges have selected it as the winner of the 2023 ARA Historical Novel Prize in the Adult Category. We are delighted to congratulate Gail Jones on her achievement.”
Due to an actual or perceived conflict of interest Dr Robert Gott recused himself from discussions relating to the inclusion of a particular book on the longlist. He withdrew from determining the shortlist and winner.
