A late-career marvel and an enriching memoir: The Age Book of the Year winners
The winners of this year’s Age Book of the Year Awards have been praised for writing books that stay with readers long after their final pages.
The awards were presented by Age editor Patrick Elligett at the opening night of the Melbourne Writers Festival on Thursday, and the winners each received $10,000, thanks to the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
Rodney Hall’s 14th novel, Vortex, picked up the fiction prize.
Rodney Hall’s Vortex won the awards’ fiction category. Queensland-based Hall, who is 89, was unable to accept the award in person but said in a pre-recorded video that the experimental Vortex, “was a risk from the beginning”.
Hall, who has twice won the prestigious Miles Franklin Award, said his 14th novel, which is set in Brisbane in 1954 and depicts an alternative history of the 20th century, took shape in 2021 when he found 18 pages of a novel he had abandoned in 1971.
“At long last I could see what I had been aiming for when I was a young man. Fifteen of the 18 pages went straight into the project.”
The fiction judges – author and critic Bram Presser, and Age and Sydney Morning Herald Canberra bureau chief Michelle Griffin – described Vortex as a late-career marvel “that sticks with you ... often surprisingly funny and sad all at once”.
Lech Blaine’s memoir, Australian Gospel, won The Age Book of the Year non-fiction award.Credit: Wayne Taylor
“At a time when many will feel caught up in the vortex of global events, this novel feels both particular to its time and place and yet universal.”
The novel has been widely acclaimed as Hall’s best, but the author says he doesn’t distract himself with comparisons of his novels. “I just try to keep each book fresh for the reader.”
Lech Blaine’s stranger-than-fiction memoir, Australian Gospel, won the non-fiction award. The story of his family’s battle with the biological parents of Lech’s three fostered siblings, Christian fanatics who spent decades trying to get their children back, was praised as “an enriching experience”.
The non-fiction judges – author, reviewer and mission director of Caritas Australia, Michael McGirr, and author and director Lorin Clarke – said Blaine is “an exceptionally gifted storyteller, alive to all the nuances of character and the circumstances that shape the lives of people”.
Blaine said he always knew it was a remarkable story. “But it’s another thing to find readers who could reaffirm that I wasn’t completely crazy for thinking that this is something that would connect with people.”
The book took him almost a decade to write, using his late mother Lenore’s archives and 40 years’ of personal diaries. In his moving acceptance speech, he dedicated the award to her.
Australian Gospel wouldn’t exist, he said, without the sacrifices of his parents. “It definitely wouldn’t exist without the love of reading and writing that Mum passed on to me,” he said.
“She’s the real winner. I wish my humble mum could see how she has become a hero to total strangers.”
The 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival continues until Sunday. Talks from Indigenous academic Marcia Langton, federal election pollster Kos Samaras and television personality Sarah Wilson are already sold out.
Music legend Jimmy Barnes’ Saturday talk with Rockwiz’s Brian Nankervis at the Athenaeum Theatre is close to selling out, while on the same day Jamila Rizvi and Rosie Waterland will discuss their new book, Broken Brains.
Indigenous voices feature prominently in this year’s program. Musician Alice Skye, human rights advocate Thomas Mayo and human rights lawyer and writer Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts are also part of the program.
With Alexander Darling
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