Chandran wins 2023 Miles Franklin for ‘Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens’

Shankari Chandran has won the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award, worth $60,000, for her novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens (Ultimo).

Chosen from a shortlist of six announced in June, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, explores how the family behind the fictional Cinnamon Gardens Nursing Home came to be in Sydney, through five different perspectives and an ensemble of supporting characters.

Said Chandran: ‘It’s such an honour to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award, honestly, I’m still in shock. To be recognised among my Australian writing peers in this way is extraordinary. It means so much to me that Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, a novel that explores what it means to “be Australian”, has been recognised in this way.’

This year’s judging panel, which comprises State Library of NSW Mitchell librarian Richard Neville, critics Bernadette Brennan and James Ley, scholar Mridula Nath Chakraborty, and writer and editor Elfie Shiosaki, said Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens was ‘alive with 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.”’

Established through the will of Miles Franklin, the Miles Franklin Literary Award recognises a novel of the highest literary merit that presents ‘Australian life in any of its phases’. Chandran’s novel is the first book published by Ultimo Press to win the award since the independent publisher was established by Hardie Grant in 2020.

The award was announced at a ceremony in Sydney on Tuesday, 25 July.

Category: Awards Local news