# The 15 Best Miles Franklin Award-Winning Novels

> Sweeping outback epics, intimate small-town romances and fierce contemporary voices, all crowned by Australia's most prestigious literary prize. Which deserves the top spot?

*By YPB Team · Published July 5, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-15-best-miles-franklin-award-winning-novels*

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## Current results (3 votes)

1. **Voss** — 100% (3 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Patrick White's 1957 novel about a doomed expedition into the Australian outback, the very first Miles Franklin winner.
2. **Too Much Lip** — 0% (0 votes · score 600/1000)
   Melissa Lucashenko's fierce, funny 2019 winner about a Aboriginal woman returning to her hometown.
3. **Breath** — 0% (0 votes · score 551/1000)
   Tim Winton's 2009 winner about teenage surfers chasing danger and thrill on the coast.
4. **Oscar and Lucinda** — 0% (0 votes · score 428/1000)
   Peter Carey's 1989 winner about two gamblers and a glass church, later adapted into a film.
5. **Dirt Music** — 0% (0 votes · score 428/1000)
   Tim Winton's 2002 winner, a passionate story of love and escape on Australia's wild west coast.
6. **Truth** — 0% (0 votes · score 428/1000)
   Peter Temple's 2010 crime novel, the first genre thriller to win the Miles Franklin.
7. **The Great World** — 0% (0 votes · score 350/1000)
   David Malouf's 1991 novel following two men through war and the sweep of 20th-century Australian life.
8. **That Deadman Dance** — 0% (0 votes · score 350/1000)
   Kim Scott's 2011 winner about early contact between Aboriginal people and European settlers.
9. **Cloudstreet** — 0% (0 votes · score 350/1000)
   Tim Winton's beloved 1992 saga of two working-class families sharing a rambling Perth house.
10. **Praiseworthy** — 0% (0 votes · score 350/1000)
   Alexis Wright's monumental 2024 winner, an epic satire set in a climate-changed Australian town.
11. **Questions of Travel** — 0% (0 votes · score 257/1000)
   Michelle de Kretser's 2013 winner interweaving two lives across decades of global wandering.
12. **The Idea of Perfection** — 0% (0 votes · score 257/1000)
   Kate Grenville's 2001 winner, a quiet love story set in a small New South Wales town.
13. **Carpentaria** — 0% (0 votes · score 143/1000)
   Alexis Wright's sweeping 2007 novel of an Aboriginal community in Australia's Gulf Country.
14. **Bliss** — 0% (0 votes · score 143/1000)
   Peter Carey's darkly comic 1981 debut novel about an advertising man who believes he has died and gone to hell.
15. **The Yield** — 0% (0 votes · score 143/1000)
   Tara June Winch's acclaimed 2020 novel weaving language, loss, and Indigenous heritage.

Tags: books, australia, miles franklin