Omar Musa’s Fierceland wins the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award
August 6, 2026
Omar Musa has won the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his novel Fierceland.
The first-time shortlistee receives $60,000 in prize money. The award was announced at a ceremony in Sydney on Wednesday, 5 August 2026.
On winning the award, Musa said:
“I am honoured, grateful and completely blown away to have won the Miles Franklin Award. It feels strange and wonderful. I worked very hard on Fierceland over many years, but it’s also the culmination of many other people’s feedback and advice. I’d like to thank my family in Malaysian Borneo, my mother Helen, my wife Mariel, my editors Jojo and Jo, my agent Tara, my publisher Nikki and the team at Penguin Random House Australia, my friend Nam, the rivers, the jungle in Borneo with its many faces, and the countless others who enriched me with conversations and spirit.”
The judges described the winning novel as:
“Omar Musa’s Fierceland is a tour de force set against the backdrop of the destruction of Borneo’s rainforests. Cleared to make way for palm oil plantations, this pulsing forest world is the moral centre of Fierceland and Musa’s rhythmic prose hums its defiance. In the human drama, siblings Harun and Rozana gradually realise that even in Sydney and Los Angeles, they cannot outrun the fraught legacy of their father, a palm-oil baron in Sabah. As it charts a journey of personal and planetary redemption, Fierceland refashions the venerable, vernacular hikayat traditions of Malay storytelling into new Australian idioms.”
The Miles Franklin Literary Award recognises a novel of “the highest literary merit” that presents “Australian life in any of its phases”. The award was established through the will of My Brilliant Career author Stella Miles Franklin for the “advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature”.
Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund has supported the Miles Franklin Literary Award since 2004, contributing more than half a million dollars to the award. The Cultural Fund provides $5,000 to each shortlisted author to recognise their literary achievement and support their ongoing work.
Perpetual is trustee for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the award’s 2026 media partner.
The 2026 judging panel comprised Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian of the State Library of New South Wales and Chair; Associate Professor Jumana Bayeh; Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty; Professor Tony Hughes-d’Aeth; and Associate Professor Maggie Nolan.
Congratulations to Omar Musa and all the authors shortlisted for the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Visit milesfranklin.com.au to learn more.