First-time short-listee Omar Musa has won the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his novel, Fierceland – a trailblazing journey across the globe.
“I am honoured, grateful and completely blown away to have won the Miles Franklin Award. It feels strange and wonderful. I worked very hard on Fierceland over many years, but it’s also the culmination of many other people’s feedback and advice,” said Omar Musa.
“I’d like to thank my family in Malaysian Borneo, my mother Helen, my wife Mariel, my editors Jojo and Jo, my agent Tara, my publisher Nikki and the team at Penguin Random House Australia, my friend Nam, the rivers, the jungle in Borneo with its many faces, and the countless others who enriched me with conversations and spirit.”
Established through the will of My Brilliant Career author, Stella Miles Franklin, for the “advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature,” the Miles Franklin Literary Award recognises a novel of “the highest literary merit” that presents “Australian life in any of its phases.” Perpetual serves as Trustee for the Award.
“The Miles Franklin Literary Award recognises novels that share the richness of Australian life. In Fierceland, Omar Musa brings a distinct perspective and literary vision that reflects the cultural depth, complexity, and interconnectedness of contemporary Australia,” said Perpetual Wealth’s Managing Partner, Community, Social and ESG Investment Caitriona Fay.
“His win affirms the continuing evolution of Australian literature, and the literary tradition that Miles Franklin sought to celebrate, one that embraces new voices, broadens our understanding of Australian experience, and continues to grow in bold and exciting ways.”
Musa’s novel was chosen from a shortlist that included Discipline by Randa Abel-Fattah (University of Queensland Press), First Name Second Name by Steve MinOn (University of Queensland Press), My Heart at Evening by Konrad Muller (Evercreech Editions), Little World by Josephine Rowe (Black Inc), and You Must Remember This by Sean Wilson (Affirm Press). Musa will receive $60,000 in prize money.
When describing this year’s winning novel, the judges said, “Omar Musa’s Fierceland is a tour de force set against the backdrop of the destruction of Borneo’s rainforests. Cleared to make way for palm oil plantations, this pulsing forest world is the moral centre of Fierceland and Musa’s rhythmic prose hums its defiance.”
“In the human drama, siblings Harun and Rozana gradually realise that even in Sydney and Los Angeles, they cannot outrun the fraught legacy of their father, a palm-oil baron in Sabah. As it charts a journey of personal and planetary redemption, Fierceland refashions the venerable, vernacular hikayat traditions of Malay storytelling into new Australian idioms.”
The 2026 judging panel comprised of Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian of the State Library of NSW and Chair; literary scholar, A/Prof Jumana Bayeh; literary scholar and translator, Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty; literary scholar and author, Prof Tony Hughes-d’Aeth; and literary scholar and Director of AustLit, A/Prof Maggie Nolan.
First awarded in 1957, past winners of the Miles Franklin Literary Award have included Patrick White, Randolph Stow, Ruth Park, Thea Astley, Tim Winton, Peter Carey, Anna Funder, Michelle de Kretser, Melissa Lucashenko, Tara June Winch, Amanda Lohrey, Jennifer Down, Shankari Chandran, Alexis Wright and Siang Lu.
For more information about the Miles Franklin Literary Award, visit: www.milesfranklin.com.au for details.
Images: Omar Musa – photo by Cole Bennetts | Fierceland – courtesy of Penguin Random House Australia