Arts & Culture
Rescuing Australia’s lost literary treasures
Australian books you might have missed in 2024
Three prize winners, two predictions and one tribute – this book list has your summer reading sorted
Published 31 December 2024
Now that the gifts have been exchanged, the hordes have been fed and the leftovers packed away, hopefully you can put your feet up for a bit of R&R (meaning relaxation and reading).
Here are six books from award-winning Australian authors you may have missed, and the reasons you should read them.
The prize winners
Edenglassie
by Melissa Lucashenko
Winner of multiple awards – including the 2024 ARA Historical Novel prize and the Queensland Premier’s Award for a work of State Significance – Melissa Lucashenko’s seventh novel is a compelling (re)imagining of the early years of colonial incursion and settlement in Magandjin–Brisbane.
Woven through with rich First Nations language and culture, the historical narrative of Mulanyin, a young Yugambeh man, intertwines with the contemporary storyline of Eddie, an elderly Yagara grandmother.
It foregrounds the ongoing questioning around our colonial legacies and possible future paths.
Find a friend to read it too so there’s someone to have deep, generative discussions with – you’ll want to talk about it.
Stone Yard Devotional
By Charlotte Wood
After winning two 2023 Book of the Year awards, Woods’s tenth novel was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, making Charlotte Wood the first Australian since 2014 nominated for this prestigious international award.
In this deeply contemplative story, the unnamed narrator leaves her marriage and city life and returns to rural New South Wales to join a convent.
Through strange happenings alongside the daily focus on small things, big questions arise.
Perhaps Woods’s most personal book to date, the narrator’s journey is inwards, along a pathway of reflection and reconnection.
Absorbing and evocative.
Praiseworthy
By Alexis Wright
Winning six major literary prizes – including the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award and Stella Prize – and shortlisted for a slew of others, Wright’s latest novel has been described as a ‘canon-crushing Australian novel for the ages’ (i.e. it’s a hard one to describe but set to be a classic).
Set in the fictional town of Praiseworthy, the layered narrative whirls across time in a complex expanse of language, style and story.
At 736 pages, you’ll definitely need to carve out some quiet time to tackle this challenging read.
The predictions
The Burrow
By Melanie Cheng
Melanie Cheng’s newest work, her second novel, explores the stirring of a family’s long-held grief, set against the backdrop of post-lockdown Melbourne.
As the past reawakens, a new family pet – a rabbit named Fiver – becomes the prism through which deep trauma and loss is revisited and, perhaps, healed.
Described as ‘quiet writing with such fierce emotion’ and ‘a triumph of restrained and tender storytelling’, this affecting novella has appeared on several ‘best books of 2024’ lists and will surely be a contender for a swathe of 2025 literary awards.
Juice
By Tim Winton
Strap yourself in for what could be Winton’s most powerful novel yet.
This meaty read of 536 pages tells of life after a future apocalypse. A man and a child journey through a destroyed landscape in search of survival – of self, society and soul – in a world devastated by centuries of corporate exploitation of the world’s natural resources.
The novel has been described as having echoes of Mad Max and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and perhaps also a touch of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach.
Arts & Culture
Alice Pung on John Marsden
It is an urgent call to action in what the author views as the last moments for positive change to our climate future. Already a literary giant, you can put your money on Winton’s latest to garner even more major literary prizes in 2025.
The tribute
Tomorrow, When the War Began
By John Marsden
A week before Christmas came the sad news that beloved children’s and YA author John Marsden had passed away.
Marsden, an English teacher and founder of two alternative schools, was one of the first Australian writers to write specifically for teens.
His ground-breaking novels – including the famed ‘Tomorrow’ series – shaped a generation of young readers, some of whom are now celebrated writers and artists.
Alice Pung, Sammy J, Sally Rippin, Kate Mildenhall and Penni Russon have all offered remembrances and thanks.
This is a good time to revisit Marsden’s work or share it anew with a young person in your life.
Happy summer reading.