Fed: Shortlisted author inspired by Howard years

AAP General News (Australia)
04-17-2008
Fed: Shortlisted author inspired by Howard years

By Katherine Field, National Entertainment Writer

SYDNEY, April 17 AAP - Two-time Miles Franklin award winner Rodney Hall is again up
for Australia's most prestigious book prize - this time for a book inspired by the "loss
of compassion" during the Howard government years.

Hall was today named as one of five shortlisted authors for the Australian book prize
for his novel Love without Hope.

The novel was nominated alongside fellow two-time winner Alex Miller's book Landscape
of Farewell, Sorry by Gail Jones, Steven Carroll's The Time We Have Taken, and David Brooks'
work The Fern Tattoo for this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Hall's novel is about an elderly woman who is wrongly put in an insane asylum and keeps
her sanity by using her imagination.

And while the story is set in the 1980s, Hall said he was inspired by Australian society
under former prime minister John Howard.

"It was written during the Howard era when, I think, we had lost compassion in society,"

Hall said.

"I was really shocked by the Tampa thing, that we could turn people away, drowning,"

he said, referring to the controversy over more than 400 refugees picked up by a Norwegian
container vessel, MV Tampa, in 2001.

"And that lodged itself as a thematic thing. I wanted to look at where we'd got to
where we can let the helpless remain helpless.

"And that kind of locked into an idea of a person who is helpless."

While writing the book, Hall visited a former mental institution in Goulburn, NSW,
which had rooms set up from the last time it was used for that purpose - as late as 1983.

"You'd think it was the 19th century, you couldn't believe it," Hall said.

Hall won the Miles Franklin award, which recognises literary contributions to Australian
cultural life, in 1982 and 1994.

This year, some 59 books were submitted for the award.

Announcing the shortlist in Sydney today, Judge Morag Fraser said this year's initial
selection was the strongest ever.

"It is rare to have this depth and quality across the board of the five," Professor Fraser said.

She said all the short-listed books shared a common thread - dealing with themes of
time and identity in Australia - and joked that they should be compulsory "preparatory
homework" for the upcoming 2020 Summit.

Of the five short-listed authors, Brooks is the only first-time nominee.

The award has been running since 1957, and past winners include Thea Astley, Tim Winton
and Elizabeth Jolley.

The winner will be announced at a gala dinner at the NSW State Library on June 19.

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