Omar Musa wins 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award for “Fierceland”
Omar Musa has won the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award, worth $60,000, for his novel Fierceland (Penguin).
Musa is a Bornean Australian author, visual artist and poet. His debut novel Here Come the Dogs (Hamish Hamilton) was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and Musa was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelists in 2015.
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.”
Fierceland was chosen from a longlist of 10, followed by a shortlist of 6 by the judges: Mitchell Librarian of the State Library of NSW Richard Neville (chair), and literary scholars Jumana Bayeh, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth and Maggie Nolan.
The judges said: “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.”
In her review for Books+Publishing, Marina Sano wrote of Fierceland: “The writing is often intentionally claustrophobic, mimicking the humid mugginess of the tropics while conveying a yearning homesickness for a home that may no longer exist. This striking novel is a bold addition to the literary landscape, using the specificity of its Sabahan setting and characters to explore universally resonant themes, particularly through its entanglement with the long-standing networks of global colonialism.”
The Miles Franklin Literary Award was established through the will of My Brilliant Career author, Stella Miles Franklin, for the “advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature” and recognises a novel of “the highest literary merit” that presents “Australian life in any of its phases”.
The award was announced at a ceremony in Sydney on Wednesday 5 August 2026.
Last year’s winner was Siang Lu for his novel Ghost Cities (University of Queensland Press).
Category: Awards Local news
