Counting and Cracking: Belvoir Street's standout hit wins Australia’s richest literary prize

First-time playwright S. Shakthidharan and associate writer Eamon Flack share the $125,000 prize, while Christos Tsiolkas won for fiction

S “Shakthi” Shakthidharan and associate writer Eamon Flack have won Australia richest literary prize, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, for their drama Counting and Cracking. The epic play – Shakthidharan’s first – was the standout hit for Belvoir Theatre company in 2019.

The pair will share in the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature on top of their $25,000 category win for drama – the same total awarded to asylum seeker, journalist and author Behrouz Boochani, who was still detained on Manus Island when he swept the awards with his debut book No Friend But the Mountains in 2019.

Related: Counting and Cracking: the story behind Belvoir Street theatre's most ambitious play to date

Related: Shame, squalor and the birth of the Christian church: Christos Tsiolkas' wild ride to Damascus | David Marr

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