Hello and Happy International Women’s Day!

Today has been a very big day for literary prize. Today we see the announcement of The Women’s Prize longlist along with The Stella Prize shortlist.

Last year I really adored reading the winner of The Stella Prize that I’ve decided to set myself a little challenge of reading this year’s short list before the winner is announced on the 12 April.

For those of you who don’t know, The Stella Prize is a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing, and who are also champions of cultural change. Both fiction and non fiction books are eligible for entry.  The prize is named after one of Australia’s most iconic writers, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin. She published her work under the name Miles Franklin. The first Stella award was given in 2013.

This challenge fits into another goal of mine, which is to read more Australian authors. As an Australian and aspiring novelist, it is pretty abysmal the amount of local authors I read.

I will leave a link to the book along with a section of the blurb. With that said, let’s get onto the books!

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The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar 

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is an extraordinarily powerful and evocative literary novel set in Iran in the period immediately after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Using the lyrical magic realism style of classical Persian storytelling, Azar draws the reader deep into the heart of a family caught in the maelstrom of post-revolutionary chaos and brutality that sweeps across an ancient land and its people.

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Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman

The Natives of the Colony are restless. The Settlers are eager to have a nation of peace, and to bring the savages into line. Families are torn apart, reeducation is enforced. This rich land will provide for all.

This is not Australia as we know it. This is not the Australia of our history.

 

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Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser 

The dazzling new novel from Michelle de Kretser, author of Questions of Travel, bestseller and winner of the Miles Franklin Award.

Set in Sydney, Paris and Sri Lanka, The Life to Come is a mesmerising novel about the stories we tell and don’t tell ourselves as individuals, as societies and as nations. It feels at once firmly classic and exhilaratingly contemporary.

 

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An Uncertain Grace by Krissy Kneen

Some time in the near future, university lecturer Caspar receives a gift from a former student called Liv: a memory stick containing a virtual narrative. Hooked up to a virtual reality bodysuit, he becomes immersed in the experience of their past sexual relationship. But this time it is her experience. What was for him an erotic interlude, resonant with the thrill of seduction, was very different for her – and when he has lived it, he will understand how.

An Uncertain Grace is a novel in five parts by one of Australia’s most inventive and provocative writers. Moving, thoughtful, sometimes playful, it is about who we are – our best and worst selves, our innermost selves – and who we might become.

 

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The Fish Girl by Mirandi Riwoe 

The Fish Girl, tells of an Indonesian girl whose life is changed irrevocably when she moves from a small fishing village to work in the house of a Dutch merchant. There she finds both hardship and tenderness as her traditional past and colonial present collide.

 

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Tracker by Alexis Wright 

Miles Franklin Award-winning novelist Alexis Wright returns to non-fiction in her new book, Tracker, a collective memoir of the charismatic Aboriginal leader, political thinker, and entrepreneur who died in Darwin in 2015. Taken from his family as a child and brought up in a mission on Croker Island, Tracker Tilmouth returned home to transform the world of Aboriginal politics. He worked tirelessly for Aboriginal self-determination, creating opportunities for land use and economic development in his many roles, including Director of the Central Land Council.

 

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That’s it for me. Comment down below and let me know if you either a) read any of these or b) want to read any of these. 
Until next time, happy reading!
Dearna