This year’s winners of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards query the instability of Australian identity. And the winners of the fiction and nonfiction prizes both point to the cruel legacy of European invasion and colonialism.

A brave and moving historical Yolŋu novel, A Piece of Red Cloth, has won the fiction prize. It was collectively authored by Yolŋu knowledge holders Merrkiyawuy Ganambar-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga and Djawundil Maymuru, and novelist Leonie Norrington.

A pioneering collaboration between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal writers that honours Yolŋu ancestors through the eyes of their descendants, it represents a healing opportunity for Australian culture. As Norrington says, “Aboriginal people, since the first invaders came, have been trying to say, ‘Look, we have a really wonderful way of understanding the world, and you can learn from it.’”

Described by the judges as “a profound work of remembrance, fusing oral history, novelistic technique and deep cultural knowledge”, this innovative book also received this year’s Australian Book Industry Award for Social Impact Book of the Year. It has been shortlisted for multiple prizes.

The nonfiction prize winner, Walkley Award-winning journalist Kate Wild’s The Red House, is a gripping exposé of race and power within contemporary Australia – explored through the tragic killing of Kumanjayi Walker in 2019, and the subsequent murder trial of Constable Zachary Rolfe. It’s also no stranger to literary prizes, having won this year’s Age Non-fiction Book of the Year.

Play, emotion and imagination

Turkish–Australian Ender Başkan’s playful and........

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