Tara June Winch's THE YIELD wins the Australian 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award
NEW YORK, July 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Tara June Winch's THE YIELD (HarperVia; June 2, 2020; $27.99) has just won the Australian 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Each year the prestigious prize, first established in 1957, is awarded to a novel of literary merit focusing on Australian life. Previous winners include Kim Scott's Benang, and Melissa Lucashenko's Too Much Lip. Tara June Winch's acceptance speech can be found here.
"The story at the heart of Tara June Winch's novel is as moving as it is important. This is a powerful book about language and its essential connection to culture and place. We're delighted to publish it as part of HarperVia's international list," says Judith Curr, President and Publisher of the HarperOne Group.
THE YIELD presents multiple narratives: a missionary's confession, told through letters, of everything he did and failed to do; Albert "Poppy" Gondiwindi's story, revealed in his dictionary of the Wiradjuri language; and the contemporary story of Poppy's granddaughter, August, who comes to believe the dictionary might be the key to saving her family's land—if only she could find it.
After ten years living in the United Kingdom running from her past, Poppy's death calls August back home to Australia, to Prosperous, the house she grew up in with Jedda, her older sister who went missing at nine years old. Seeing her family again and walking the fields of Prosperous brings back every aching memory she has tried for so long to escape. Upon returning, August also discovers that Prosperous is no longer her family's—and, in fact, never was. The government has sold it to a tin mine, leaving her grandmother with no certain place to go.
About the Author: Tara June Winch is the Wiradjuri author of novel Swallow the Air and short story collection After the Carnage. For her first novel, she was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist and received mentorship from Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka as part of the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. She was born in Australia in 1983 and currently lives in France with her family.
SOURCE HarperVia
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