Melissa Lucashenko wins the 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize

Congratulations to Melissa Lucashenko on being awarded the 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize in the adult category for her novel Edenglassie.

Presented by the Historical Novel Society Australasia (HNSA) at a ceremony at Parliament House in Sydney, the awards recognise ‘the outstanding literary talents of novelists who illuminate stories of the past, providing a window into our present and the future’. The prize was established in 2020 and is open to historical fiction books from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

The adult category judging panel, which included Tony Maniaty (chair), Meenakshi Bharat, Sienna Brown, Catherine Chidgey and Michael Williams, said:

Edenglassie was ‘a fiercely original exploration of Australia’s past and its enduring consequences.

According to the Chair, Tony Maniaty:

Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie is a fiercely original exploration of Australia’s past and its enduring consequences – an ambitious, epic novel that cracks what the author calls the ‘racist mythmaking’ that has painted Aboriginal people so negatively.

The Judges also stated:

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 novel weaves together two powerful streams – 19th century colonialism, and contemporary Indigenous existence in Australia. Lucashenko’s deft handling of these dual timelines illuminates the brutal realities of colonisation while celebrating the resilience of Indigenous cultures. While the novel is geographically specific, and wonderfully so, painting vivid images of South-East Queensland ‘then and now’, there’s a strong sense of the universal, showing the often-tragic impacts of displacement across history.

Lucashenko’s deep research into the colonial history of Moreton Bay in the 1850s shines through, as does the deep love between the towering Mulanyin, arriving from the Nerang region, and Nita, an orphaned Moreton Bay woman who works for family of Tom Petrie, a man of integrity caught up in the culture war of his time.

In the contemporary strand, Edenglassie sees the no-nonsense Eddie Blanket in a Brisbane hospital, attended by her very feisty relative Winona; both become engaged in contemporary Brisbane life, one at a personal level and the other more politically, yet equally with enduring scepticism.

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.

Lucashenko told Hannah Story from ABC ARTS:

I wanted to have a book out there that said, it's been 200 years since Oxley sailed up the river, but what about the people that were already there, and what happened in the aftermath? Let's talk about that.

Lucashenko also stated that,

she had been thinking about writing the novel for roughly 20 years, since she first read Tom Petrie's Reminiscences of Early Queensland, as recorded by his daughter Constance. Petrie is a central figure in Edenglassie — a white man who establishes a settlement in Queensland with the blessing of Traditional Owners, and the help of Mulanyin. I wanted to write about him and say it didn't have to be the way it was. It could have been different. And the fact that it could have been different back then implies that it can be different now.

On winning the $100,000 ARA Historical Novel Prize and the $50,000 Margaret and Colin Roderick earlier in the week Melissa told Hannah Story from ABC Arts:

[That] she hopes to use some of the $150,000 she won this week to help get her brother into stable housing and to fund her next book.
The prize money that I've won over the past several years has already helped an Aboriginal single mum in my extended family into her own home, this one will hopefully extend that project a bit more until King Charles decides to give it [the land] back anyway.

A huge congratulations again, to Melissa Lucashenko on this monumental win!