The winner of the 2021 Miles Franklin Award is Amanda Lohrey’s novel The Labyrinth.

Written as thigh-slapping yarn, using humour, irony and satire, it’s a work that holds a mirror up to the values of Australian publishing industry.

“Erica Marsden buys an old shack in a secluded community on Australia’s south-east coast. She’s there because it’s close to the prison where her son, Daniel, has been jailed for a horrific crime. But she’s also there because she feels compelled to build a stone labyrinth, similar to the one she played in as a child, when she lived in the asylum where her father was a psychiatrist. To build the labyrinth, Erica needs help, and she finds that in a man called Jurko, an illegal immigrant looking to escape his past…” says one reviewer.

There has to be an Aboriginal environmental activist in there somewhere.

I read it in one take and it’s driven me to take up heroin addiction and stand up comedy.