Omar Musa has won the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award for Fierceland, an energetic, formally adventurous novel that confirms his place as one of the most ambitious voices in contemporary Australian literature.

The prize recognises a work that stretches the possibilities of the contemporary Australian novel, while remaining deeply engaged with questions of history, identity and the enduring legacies of empires.

Fierceland combines the sweep of an epic with the formal playfulness of postmodern fiction, tracing intertwined stories of family inheritance, colonial violence and environmental destruction across Malaysian Borneo, Australia and the west coast of the United States. Few novels on this year’s shortlist matched its imaginative range of formal exuberance.

The novel follows siblings Roz and Huran as they return to Malaysian Borneo after the death of their father, Yusuf, a wealthy palm-oil magnate whose fortune was built on the back of deforestation and dispossession. Their attempt to reckon with his legacy becomes an inquiry into family history and the long shadows cast by systemic exploitation across generations.

Fierceland refuses narrow geographical and cultural boundaries, presenting Australia as one point within a network........

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