Miles Franklin winner: an outsider's dark view of Australian masculinity

British writer Evie Wyld has taken Australia's top literary prize by exposing the 'raw, wounded, dangerous edge' of its masculinity

Shirley Hazzard accepted the 2004 Miles Franklin for her novel The Great Fire with calculated bemusement. The remarks made by the Australian-born, New York-based writer at the time suggested it was pleasant but somewhat odd to be feted and claimed by a country she had fled with relief half a century before.

I do not think that the winner of this year's award, English-born, London-based Evie Wyld would claim even such close affiliation with Australia as Hazzard, though she has done her time on these shores as a child and still has family here. And, I suspect, she likes the place more than the redoubtable Hazzard ever will.

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