Amanda Lohrey wins Miles Franklin Award for The Labyrinth | Australia News

Tasmanian writer Amanda Lohrey received her first Miles Franklin literary award at the age of 74.

Although a multiple nominee and recipient of other notable gongs over the years such as the Patrick White Award and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, it took a lifetime for Lohrey to land What Is Without doubt the most prestigious award for the Australian writing, with his seventh novel The Labyrinth.

The $ 60,000 prize was announced Thursday via a live broadcast for the second year in a row, due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Judge Miles Franklin and State Library of NSW Mitchell Librarian Richard Neville described The Labyrinth as “an elegiac novel steeped in sadness.”

It tells the story of a woman who moves to a remote rural community to be closer to her son, who is serving a prison sentence for murderous negligence. She gets to know her neighbors, but not necessarily like them, when she sets out to build a stone maze, in an attempt to make sense of the loss and isolation in her life.

“It’s a beautifully written reflection on conflict between parents and children, men and women, and the value and purpose of creative work,” Neville said.

Speaking to Guardian Australia, Lohrey said that while she was drawn to political themes in her early works of fiction, as she matured as a writer, she became more intrigued by internal travel than by people do in their life.

” I called [The Labyrinth] a pastoral, because I wanted to explore the change of tree and the change of sea [phenomena] which is in fact a centuries-old decision, ”she said.

“People have always tried to escape into some kind of primitive landscape of rural virtue, in order to restore a damaged part of themselves.”

The fact that Lohrey’s central character, Erica Marsden, chose to build a stone maze – as opposed to a maze – to mend the broken part of herself is significant.

“A maze is a puzzle, it’s a test of your intellect, it has a lot of dead ends, you can get lost,” she said.

“A labyrinth has an entry path and the same exit path. It can be a very complex path that loops and takes you some time to get to the center – and some time to get back – but you can’t get lost … you will always find your way.

Guardian book reviewer Bec Kavanagh describes The Labyrinth as a “well-settled novel” and “a sprawling narrative that stands up to rigid expectations.”

“The Labyrinth offers an attraction to the unknown and a comfort in solitude,” Kavanagh wrote in August of last year.

“Despite an at times odd loneliness, the book is quietly compelling, a carefully planned reflection on the many ways we might retrace and remake ourselves and our relationships.”

Lohrey said the novel, published by Text Publishing, was well received, but declined to say if she thought The Labyrinth was her best work to date.

“I have had a tremendous amount of positive feedback, especially from book groups and book clubs, it can often be very critical,” she said.

“But my novels are all very different, and it’s very difficult to be objective about your own work.

“And of course, the reader is the co-creator of the book, he contributes 50%. And so the book is different for each reader.

“It’s fascinating when you go to book clubs as a guest and you hear them discussing your book and you’re like, ‘Was this the book I wrote? “, because people who read fiction, it’s such a subjective experience.”

Women writers have dominated the Miles Franklin Literary Prize for the past decade. Only one writer, of Serbian origin AS Patrić [Black Rock White City], received the award in the last 10 years – in 2016.

“Strangely enough, since the Stella Prize [introduced in 2013 to recognise female writers, and a response to the traditional male dominance in Australian literary prizes], more women than men have won the Miles Franklin, ”Lohrey said.

“I don’t think anyone in the current climate would bother putting in place other gender-specific awards, we have one, and that’s enough,” she said.

“But hey on the Stella, the more prizes, the better. We need all the prices we can get in Australia, it’s a small market, and even writers who are highly valued and sell moderately well are still not making a good living.

“A dollar prize really prepares you to write your next book. “

Like most writers, Lohrey is reluctant to discuss the book she is currently working on, although she is happy to reveal that it is already half-finished.

“Writers are deeply superstitious creatures, and also what you think the novel often deals with [it] turns out to be about something else, ”she said.

“It kind of evolves as you go along and that’s the fun part, you never know where you’re going to end up.

“It’s a very fun exercise, although there is a lot of angst along the way because, like a maze, you can wind up a lot of your own dead ends, before you get to where you need to go.”