Sydney-based lawyer and author Shankari Chandran has won this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award for her third novel, “Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens”.
Chandran was awarded $60,000 in prize money on Tuesday night in Sydney – weeks after receiving the news of her win.
The author told ArtsHub she received a phone call from Richard Neville, the chair of the selection panel, notifying her of the win.
“I asked him if I could just put him on mute so that I could scream,” Chandran said.
“Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens” is a multigenerational family saga, criss-crossing between present-day western Sydney and flashbacks to Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war. The story begins quietly in an aged care home before jumping to scenes of violence, trauma and grief.
“It dives into the contested formation and histories of both countries,” Chandran explained, adding “[it] explores questions of what it means to be Australian and why that is defined and forged by particular dominant groups to the inclusion of some and to the exclusion of others.”
“There certainly is a lot of rage in the book,” Chandran, who was born in the UK, told the Guardian this week.
“But I feel like a lot of my work begins from that place of rage. But through the writing, through the thinking and in the reflecting, it goes to a place of love. I hope.”
The book was published by Robert Watkins at Ultimo Press, a publisher she described as one “who has set out very deliberately to ensure that his company is an expansive space that welcomes and reflects a multiplicity of identities within Australia.”
In their joint statement, the judges praised the book’s character, dialogue and action:
“With enormous skill Chandran recounts a solemn history, largely through a cast of squabbling, endearing elders, and invites us to open our hearts and minds: “If you read the literature of a country … you will understand it; you will fall in love with it”.’
“It treads carefully on contested historical claims, reminding us that horrors forgotten are horrors bound to be repeated, and that the reclamation and retelling of history cannot be undertaken without listening to the story-tellers amongst us.”
Chandran, who lived in London for more than a decade heading the Pro Bono & Community Affairs for Allen & Overy, started writing “Chai” during the eruption of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements.
She continued working on it throughout the pandemic.
Chandran said she almost didn’t write this book.
“I thought my publishing days were over in Australia and in the world and I had to learn to be OK with that,” she told ArtsHub. “So that was what enabled me to write Chai Time in Cinnamon Gardens with complete honesty.”
“I talked with my gloves off and kept my heart open, and just wrote how I felt and experienced and what I’ve always wanted to say. This novel starts in anger and finishes in love and it helped me explore the confusion that I’ve often felt about identity in Australia.”
Chandran was told her first novel, “Song of the Sun God” – a story about colonisation, dispossession and forced migration was “not Australian enough for the market.”
Now, Chandran said the book is being adapated onto the small screen, with “one of the actresses from Bridgerton, so someone must have liked it.”
This year’s shortlisted Miles Franklin books were: Hopeless Kingdom by Kgshak Akec (UWA Publishing), Limberlostby Robbie Arnott (Text Publishing), Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au (Giramondo Publishing), The Lovers by Yumna Kassab (Ultimo Press) and Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor (Pan Macmillan Australia).
Check back with Women’s Agenda for our interview with the author, published on Thursday.