‘The Other Side of the World’ wins 2015 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction

Stephanie Bishop’s The Other Side of the World (Hachette) has won the 2015 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction.

Bishop’s novel was chosen from a shortlist of six for the $4000 prize, which was established in 2014 to ‘increase the commercial success of first or second books by Australian authors’. The Other Side of the World is Bishop’s second novel, following her 2015 debut The Singing (Brandl & Schlesinger).

The judges this year were Readings managing director Mark Rubbo, St Kilda store manager Amy Vuleta, Readings Monthly editor Elke Power and Hawthorn store buyer Danielle Mirabella. Author Hannah Kent also helped to select a winner from the shortlist.

Rubbo said in a statement: ‘I was terribly impressed by The Other Side of the World. It’s evocative of its time and place—England and Australia in the sixties—yet has a timelessness about it that makes it totally relevant.’

‘The Other Side of the World is a novel that will undoubtedly provoke discussion,’ said Kent. ‘Beautifully written and atmospheric, Bishop illustrates the deep ambivalence one woman feels towards marriage and motherhood with breathtaking insight. Bishop’s skill as a writer is unquestionable: she has a poet’s eye for the world.’

The inaugural winner of the prize, Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals (Hamish Hamilton), was one of Readings’ bestselling books in 2014.