Fierceland by Omar Musa wins The 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Omar Musa has won one of Australia's top literary prizes, the $60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award, for his novel Fierceland, a family saga interrogating ideas of inheritance, complicity and colonialism.

Fierceland tells the story of two siblings who grow up in Kota Kinabalu on the island of Borneo. The children of a palm oil baron, they must contend with his complicated legacy when, as adults, they travel back to Malaysia for his funeral. Described by the Miles Franklin judges as "a tour de force”, Fierceland weaves the past and the present into an emotionally powerful story that plays out at a mythical scale.

The shortlisted titles:

• Discipline by Randa Abel-Fattah

• First Name Second Name by Steve MinOn

• My Heart at Eveningby Konrad Muller

• Little World by Josephine Rowe

• You Must Remember This by Sean Wilson