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# Omar Musa wins the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award for Fierceland
- URL: https://www.blankidentity.com.au/omar-musa-fierceland-miles-franklin/
- Published: 2026-09-26T08:07:22.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-26T08:07:22.000Z
- Description: Queanbeyan-raised writer Omar Musa has won the A$60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award for Fierceland, a family saga set between Malaysian Borneo and Sydney.
- Author: Sian L
- Tags: Culture, News

Omar Musa has won the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award, one of Australia's best-known literary prizes, for his novel *Fierceland*. The win was announced at a ceremony in Sydney on 5 August 2026 and carries A$60,000 in prize money. It caps a strong year for the book, which also took the 2026 Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction.

## The book

*Fierceland* is a family saga that moves between Malaysian Borneo and Sydney. It follows siblings Roz and Harun, the children of a palm oil baron in Kota Kinabalu, who return for their father's funeral and are forced to reckon with a fortune built on rainforest destruction and land dispossession, and with his part in a man's violent disappearance.

The judges called it "a tour de force" that "refashions ... hikayat traditions of Malay storytelling into new Australian idioms", adding that "Musa's rhythmic prose hums its defiance".

Musa told the ABC he intended the novel as "a subversion and a critique of ... Heart of Darkness", putting local characters and the natural world at the centre rather than using them as a backdrop to a European story. He also resisted a simple reading of the palm oil industry, noting that "rural poor in ... Malaysia were brought out of poverty by some of those palm oil schemes."

## Who is Omar Musa?

Musa grew up in Queanbeyan, near Canberra, to a Malaysian father and an Australian mother who is a theatre-maker and arts journalist. Before fiction he built a following as a hip hop artist, visual artist and former Australian slam poetry champion. His earlier novel, *Here Come the Dogs*, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin in 2015, and his short story collection *The Vape Lord of Queanbeyan* was published in July 2026.

According to his publisher, Musa said he was "honoured, grateful and completely blown away" by the win. Penguin Random House Australia editor Jojo Jakob described the novel as "a masterful culmination of a vision that has always been big, bold and unafraid of the moment."

## The shortlist

Musa beat five other finalists, each of whom receives A$5,000:

- *Discipline* by Randa Abdel-Fattah (University of Queensland Press)
- *First Name Second Name* by Steve MinOn (University of Queensland Press)
- *My Heart at Evening* by Konrad Muller (Evercreech Editions)
- *Little World* by Josephine Rowe (Black Inc.)
- *You Must Remember This* by Sean Wilson (Affirm Press)

This year's judges were Richard Neville, Jumana Bayeh, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Tony Hughes-d'Aeth and Maggie Nolan. Established through the will of author Stella Miles Franklin and awarded since 1957, the prize recognises a novel of "the highest literary merit" presenting "Australian life in any of its phases". Perpetual is the award's trustee.

## Where to find it

*Fierceland* is published by Penguin Random House Australia and is available from Australian booksellers; Melbourne bookseller Readings listed it at A$29.99 as a promotional price through August.

*Sources:* [*ABC News*](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-05/omar-musa-fierceland-winner-2026-miles-franklin-literary-award/106975328?ref=blankidentity.com.au)*,* [*Penguin Random House Australia*](https://www.penguin.com.au/news/5368-fierceland-by-omar-musa-wins-2026-miles-franklin-literary-award?ref=blankidentity.com.au)