Tasmanian author Amanda Lohrey has won the $80,000 Prime Minister's Literary Award for her seventh novel, The Labyrinth — compounding a banner year in which she also won the $60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award.
The Prime Minister's Literary Awards were launched in 2008 by then-prime minister Kevin RuddWinners receive $80,000 and finalists receive $5,000 eachIn bestowing the award — one of the richest literary prizes in Australia — the judges praised Lohrey as "a writer of uncompromising artistic purpose who is never content for the novel to be mere entertainment".
In The Labyrinth, a woman moves to a coastal town to be closer to her estranged and imprisoned son — and builds a labyrinth in her backyard, as a way of coping with her grief and uncertainty. Garra Nalla — the coastal hamlet setting of The Labyrinth — was also the setting of Lohrey's 2009 novella Vertigo.
In a speech delivered by her agent Lyn Tranter, Lohrey lamented the diminished status of Australian literature in our universities. "Australian literature has never been richer, or more diverse. So it was a great shock when our oldest university — [University of] Sydney — recently abolished its chair of Australian Literature. I look forward to the day when the university re-establishes an institution that any self-respecting nation should be proud to showcase," she said.
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