Finalist for $80,000 literary prize
AUTHOR Anna Funder is a finalist for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, which carries an $80,000 prize.
Her debut novel, All That I Am – a fictional account set during Hitler’s rule in Germany – was published last year by Penguin Books and has just been shortlisted in the fiction category of the award.
Australian-born Funder, who now lives in New York with her husband and three children, is riding high on the success of the book – it has also been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award.
All That I Am has already won the book industry book-of-the-year award, literary fiction book of the year and independent booksellers’ book of the year.
Last week it won the $35,000 Barbara Jefferis Award.
All That I Am is set in 1939. With Hitler’s rise to power, a group of friends who oppose the tyranny of Nazism find refuge in London and continue their fight in secret. But they find that England is not the safe haven they believe and soon suffer from an act of betrayal.
Funder’s first book, Stasiland, won the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize and became an international bestseller, being published in 20 countries and translated into 16 languages. The true stories are set around life in communist East Germany.
The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards is the nation’s richest literary awards offering a total of $600,000 in prizes in six categories.
The winner of each category – fiction, non-fiction, Australian history, young adult fiction, poetry and children’s fiction – each receive $80,000. Each shortlisted entry also receives $5000.
The winners are expected to be announced next month.
REPORT by Danny Gocs
PHOTO of author Anna Funder.
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