First, a bit about the award…
Established in 1957, the Miles Franklin Award encourages and supports Australian writing by showcasing literature that best represents life in Australia, in all its phases. It will come as no surprise that Miles Franklin herself, was a writer. Her debut novel, My Brilliant Career, is now celebrated as one of Australia’s literary gems. The award was created posthumously by Miles’s endowment of a large sum of money in her will to recognise great Australian writing.
…and the winner for 2025 is… Ghost Cities by Siang Lu.
Read the article about Siang’s $60,000 win by the Sydney Morning Herald here and check out a summary of the book, below, along with the other shortlisted titles.
Ghost Cities is inspired by China’s huge, empty cities. It follows several strange and surprising stories. One is about Xiang, a young man in Sydney who gets fired from his job at the Chinese Consulate when people find out he doesn’t actually speak Chinese—he’s been using Google Translate the whole time! He’s sent to live in one of these ghost cities. But that’s just the beginning.
The book also tells wild, imaginative tales:
An ancient Emperor creates a thousand copies of himself.
A mountain becomes alive and starts to feel.
A chess-playing robot hides a deadly secret.
A world where every book is destroyed, then slowly rewritten, one page at a time, all for love and art…
The SHORTLIST
If you’d like to reserve any of the titles below, just click on the cover image.
Abraham Quin is in his seventies. He’s an immigrant who used to be a postman, a professor, and is now a writer living alone in the Adelaide Hills. In The Chinese Postman, he looks back on his life, thinking about love, friendship, writing, and growing old.
Abraham remembers funny, sad, and thoughtful moments from his past. He writes letters to Iryna Zarebina, a woman who has escaped the war in Ukraine. Their letters help him feel more connected and less alone. As he shares his stories, he begins to enjoy the small things again—like words, nature, and quiet moments.
This book offers a gentle, wise look at what it’s like to grow old and reflect on life.
1986. A young woman moves to Melbourne to study the books of famous writer Virginia Woolf. She ends up in the artsy, free-spirited suburb of St Kilda, where she meets a group of artists, students, and activists—and a man named Kit. Kit says he’s in an open relationship, and the two of them become romantically involved. As their relationship gets more confusing, the woman’s research starts falling apart. Theory & Practice is a story about love, jealousy, truth, and the messy parts of life. It mixes fiction, memoir, and essays in a unique way that challenges what a novel can be.
Written by award-winning author Michelle de Kretser, this book is full of passion, smart ideas, and sharp writing. It shows what happens when real life crashes into art.
Meadow Reed has grandparents from Australia, Tonga, and Great Britain. When she was younger, she used to say she was “full-White” and “full-Tongan,” thinking that being mixed meant she was two whole things. But even though she looks more like her White side, it’s her Tongan family who raised her—and loved her. That’s what makes her Tongan.
Meadow grows up in Mt Druitt, a hot and busy part of Western Sydney, where she deals with people who look down on Islanders. Meadow discovers friendships and love, learns what it means to have many mothers, and even finds joy in little things like Pineapple Fanta and dancing in the rain.
To understand who she really is, Meadow has to push through the expectations of family, culture, and who she thinks she should be. She’ll learn that being a strong Islander girl—even one without much money—is more powerful and beautiful than she ever imagined.
‘You can’t enslave us all, Captain!’ I yelled into his face. ‘We will resist, and you will die a beaten man. Our Blackfellows will rise…’
Compassion is a powerful and exciting story about an Aboriginal girl named Duringah—also known as Nell James—who lives in New South Wales in the 1800s. She’s the brave daughter of Muraging, a hero from Janson’s earlier book, Benevolence.
Written by Julie Janson, this story is based on the real-life experiences of one of her ancestors who was put on trial for stealing animals. It’s a tale full of action, danger, and adventure, as Nell becomes an outlaw and fights back against the unfair treatment of her people.
In 1998, an ordinary-looking man in Australia is arrested for a series of shocking murders. The news horrifies the country and brings some answers to the victims’ families. But the impact doesn’t stop there. It changes how people remember the past and how the story is told in the future, through podcasts and movies.
Highway 13 starts with murder but becomes much more. It explores the long-lasting effects of violent crime. From small towns in Australia, to places as far away as Texas and Rome. The book asks big questions: What harm do these crimes really cause? How do people and communities cope? And is it possible to tell true crime stories without making the killer the main focus?
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