Congratulations to authors Melissa Lucashenko and Tony Birch, both of whom I love, and Lenny Bartulin, who I haven’t read yet, for making the shortlist for the Historical Novel Society Australasia’s 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize. It’s so hard to choose between Women & Children and Edenglassie, because I loved them both, and hope many many people will read them, but if pushed I would have to say Edenglassie. We’ll find out when the ARA Historical Novel Prize winners are announced on 23 October 2024.

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)

Said the judges: ”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 That said, the broad range of historical references among entries – from a wide range of cultures, and eras – displayed a renewed interest generally in negotiating with the past, and revising views of how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 shortlisted titles for the 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize – CYA Category are:
Secret Sparrow by Jackie French (HarperCollins Publishers)
Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky by Rebecca Lim (Allen & Unwin)
Spies in the Sky by Beverley McWilliams (Pantera Press)

Read more here.