Some of you have probably heard of “shadow juries”. I took part in one a decade ago, for the now defunct Man Asian Literary Prize. It was great, but I haven’t taken part in any blogger-inspired shadow juries again because of the time commitment needed. If I was already impressed by the work of literary award juries, I was even more so after that experience. But, had any of you heard of a Shadow Jury for the Miles Franklin Award? I hadn’t.

It was a project of the University of Queensland’s Writing Centre. Their jury is a bit different to the blogger-run ones I’ve seen, because their aim was not to select a winner. Here is how they describe their idea of a shadow jury, its composition and its aims:

A shadow jury is an independent panel of passionate readers, critics, and literary enthusiasts who come together to review a longlist of books. While the official judging panel ultimately determines the award-winning book, the shadow jury offers an alternative lens through which to appreciate and analyse the longlisted works. 

In this post, we present reviews from our shadow jury, which included students, writers and critics from UQ who delved into each longlisted book. Through these reviews, we aim to provide readers with a multifaceted understanding of the longlisted works and spark engaging conversations about their literary significance.

So, what I am going to do here is add an excerpt from the Shadow Jury’s reviews, for each book, to whet your appetite. You might then go on and read the review (which you can find at the UQ link above) and/or, perhaps, the book itself! I’ve added UQ’s reviewer’s name in brackets at the end of the excerpt

• Kgshak Akec, Hopeless kingdom (UWAP): “This impressive first novel is less about immigration itself, and more about family as a living organism that once uprooted, wills itself to do more than survive.” The reviewer also comments on the losses that come with immigration, such as “the normalcy of being Black in Sudan, [which is] replaced by minority status and the accompanying racism in Egypt and Australia” (Doreen Baingana)
• Robbie Arnott, Limberlost (Text): “The first chapter is a revelation and a masterclass in the economy of words”. The whole novel is, I’d say. “Would I go as far as to declare that Arnott is Tasmania’s Tim Winton? Yes, I would, and I am willing to die on that hill. Limberlost is a superb rendering of a coming-of-age story. Tender, evocative, brutal and radiant.” (Carly-Jay Metcalfe)
• Jessica Au, Cold enough for snow (Giramondo): “The novel’s elliptical tone plays constantly with time and memory. How much we can know another person, even those as intimately connected as mother and daughter, haunts the book, as does how much we can know our (past, present, future) self…New Australian fiction, especially from the second- and third-generation diasporic communities of Western Sydney, is quietly but determinedly shattering the white male ceiling of Australian literature, as Maxine Beneba Clarke notes elsewhere, creating a provincial literature that is both local and global in scale. ” (Professor Anna Johnston)
• Shankari Chandran, Chai time at Cinnamon Gardens (Ultimo Press): “What does it mean to be Australian in the 21^st century? Shankari Chandran’s Miles Franklin shortlisted novel Chai Time At Cinnamon Gardens ponders this question with grace, humility, and confronting depictions of racism raging with Shakespearean levels of drama and tragedy…Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is an important and enthralling read. While it lacks subtlety on some occasions, the message it evokes is damningly clear.” (Olivia de Silva)
• Claire G Coleman, Enclave (Hachette): “Few works of speculative fiction have been considered for Australia’s most prestigious literary award, a symptom of the genre’s uneasy relationship to literary fiction and culture…In addition to its literary merits, Enclave is concerned with decolonising Australia’s stories about itself and its future. In the process, the unexamined racism still driving speculative fiction’s narratives of empire, progress, or pastoral idyll are also decolonised.” (Dr Natalie Collie)
• George Haddad, Losing face (UQP): “Ivan and Joey’s romance is what makes this an understated, lovely book with an episode of Special Victims Unit wedged inside. It’s the unusual parts of Losing Face that make it a remarkable Australian novel, not the parts ripped from the headlines.” (Pierce Wilcox)
• Pirooz Jafari, Forty nights (Ultimo Press): “Forty Nights is a debut work of literary fiction by Pirooz Jafari, who has fictionalised his own life story in this novel…Insightful, tender and whimsical, Forty Nights is a standout novel on this year’s longlist.” (Martine Kropkowski)
• Julie Janson, Madukka: The river serpent (UWAP): “While at times I struggled to understand how Janson’s first foray into crime writing had qualified for the longlist of the Miles Franklin, Madukka’s handling of issues of racism, climate change, drug use, and the ongoing First Nations’ struggle for land back and recognition ultimately makes it worthwhile. I’ll end with my initial thought; I actually think I’d really enjoy seeing this story adapted for the screen.” (Rani Tesiram)
• Yumna Kassab, The lovers (Ultimo Press): “I expected a modern fable underscored by Arabic folklore with more traditional, less didactic conventions. What I found instead was something far more poignant, raw and real…Irrespective of whether The Lovers is the recipient of the 2023 Miles Franklin, its nomination speaks to the state and tenor of contemporary Australian literature embracing the novel as an experimental form.” (Bianca Millroy)
• Fiona Kelly McGregor, Iris (Pan Macmillan Australia): “The blurb of this book asks a simple question: is Iris Webber innocent or guilty? At the end of some 430 pages, however, such a dichotomy feels terribly pale. It is the larger questions of history, reclamation, oppression, and humanity that mark McGregor’s work and transform the form of the historical novel into something alive and urgent, innovative and instructive. At its heart, Iris is (as Peter Doyle notes) a remarkable work of conjuring. With charm and grit, Iris conjures up Sydney of the 1930s, in all its grim glory. And Fiona Kelly McGregor, in a feat of sensitivity and skill, has conjured Iris Webber.” (Madeleine Dale)
• Adam Ouston, Waypoints (Puncher & Wattmann): “an anxiety dream of a novel… In a breathless spiralling narrative told (more or less) in a single feverish paragraph, Cripp [the protagonist] pinballs from one association to another, circling back to grasp at his bearings before bouncing off again into further tangents, digressions, curlicues and cul-de-sacs. In lengthy, slippery sentences, he details the history of Houdini’s failed record-breaking attempt, he dips into Victorian showmanship, the swirl of misinformation around the disappearance of MH370, the history of powered flight, Alzheimer’s disease and Australia itself…It’s a strange, ambitious, reckless thing. But it flies; it really flies…” (Vince Haig)

It is damning – but true to our time – that so many these novels address racism. But there are other subjects here too, plus a variety of forms, and, it seems, some bold new writing. I enjoyed these reviews, particularly because, as you’d expect, they critiqued the books as literary works, as content, and against the forms or styles they represent.

Shankari Chandran won the official jury’s prize with Chai time at Cinnamon Gardens – as most of you know.

Thoughts?