Congratulations to author André Dao on this incredible honour.
At an awards ceremony in Canberra last night, Anam was named winner of the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction.
Established in 2008, The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards are the country’s richest literary awards. Awards are presented in six categories – fiction, non-fiction, young adult literature, children’s literature, poetry and Australian history – to recognise ‘individual excellence, and the contribution Australian authors make to the nation’s cultural and intellectual life.’
It is a huge honour for author André Dao to be named winner, and a well-deserved recognition for his debut novel, Anam.
Judges' comments
‘André Dao’s Anam is an original and compelling exploration of histories full of trauma and exile. The author’s own family, including a version of himself, populate a poignant narrative spanning generations and continents that questions the consequences of political chaos, war, displacement and refuge.
Anam is an intimate examination of the migrant experience and its vulnerabilities, where the idea of one’s country remains suffused with uncertainty and ambiguity. Dao extends the novel form, breaking rules, forming new ones, and demonstrating how the ‘imaginative power of a novel’ is perfect for witnessing uncomfortable truths. While offering reflections on philosophy, history, language and memory, Anam is primarily a story of family relationships. Lovingly domestic in parts, boldly theoretical in others, for a country full of migrants, living amid unresolved questions of place and belonging, Anam is a profoundly relevant novel.’
About Anam
Anam blends fiction and essay, theory and everyday life to imagine that which has been repressed, left out, and forgotten. The grandson mines his family and personal stories to turn over ideas that resonate with all of us around place and home, legacy and expectation, ambition and sacrifice. As he sifts through letters, photographs, government documents and memories, he has his own family to think about: a partner and an infant daughter. Is there a way to remember the past that creates a future for them? Or does coming home always involve a certain amount of forgetting?
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