The winners of the 2025 ARA Historical Novel Prize have been announced! The annual prize recognise the outstanding literary talents of Australian novelists who explore stories of the past, to illuminate our present and future. 2025 has been a significant year for the prize, as the inaugural year for the Readers' Choice Award, and with joint-winners being chosen for the Adult category!
The prize is one of the richest literary prizes in Australia, with a prize pool of $150,000 split between the winners and shortlisted authors in the two categories. Read more about the winning books and the judges' comments below.
Adult category winners
The incredibly high quality of entries in 2025 was reflected in the rare decision by the judging panel to select joint winners in the Adult category!
Dusk
Robbie Arnott
In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt.
As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there's far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they're forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.
Read our staff review here.
I am Nannertgarrook
Tasma Walton
From her idyllic life in sea country in Nerrm (Port Phillip Bay, Victoria), Nannertgarrook is abducted and taken to a slave market, leaving behind a husband, daughter and son. Pregnant when seized, she soon gives birth to another son, whom she raises with the children of her fellow captives.
Nannertgarrook is separated not only from her Boonwurrung family, but from her birthright – the ceremonies she once was so joyously part of, the majestic whales who are her totem, the land and sky and sea country and its creatures. All these things she loves as deeply as she does her blood kin.
But now, as her reality becomes profoundly different, she must keep that family and her old life alive in her mind. Their rich, pulsating elements sing to us through her beautiful voice, even while Nannertgarrook herself is subjected to the worst of humanity. This sweeping novel asks us to consider who, in colonial history, were the real savages, and what it truly means to be civilised.
Read our staff review here.
Chair of judges, Angelo Loukakis said:
'In the democracy of letters there can, and should be, occasionally more than one "winner". For the judges of the HNSA Adult category the occasion this time is in having two very different novels that displayed qualities that made it impossible to elevate one above the other … In I am Nannertgarrook,Tasma Walton challenges us with an empathic narrative that engages our consciences via the truths of First Nations’ historical experience. She relates a story of abduction and suffering, resilience and survival – and tells of the power that lies in Indigenous remembering and belonging. In Dusk, Robbie Arnott boldly builds on the historical fact of white Australia’s destructive exploitation of the land and lifeforms in an earlier time – to imagine and present us with a skilfully narrated, symbolic as well as grounded tale of the role of personal ambition and private gain in this continent’s fate.’
The prize monies of $100,000 was shared equally between Tasma Walton and Robbie Arnott; Malcolm Knox was awarded $5,000 for his shortlisted novel, The First Friend.
Children and Young Adult category winner
The Year We Escaped
Suzanne Leal
Europe, 1940. With war on their doorstep, German classmates Klara and Rachel, and French brothers Lucien and Paul, are forced to leave their homes. They are taken to Gurs, a French detention camp in the south-west of France. It's a crowded place, with little comfort and even less food.
When Klara and Rachel are promised safe refuge in a remote French village, Lucien and Paul are anxious to join them – and will risk their own lives to get there.
Filled with adventure, danger and intrigue, this is the story of four unlikely friends desperate to escape from a war that keeps coming closer.
Chair of judges, Dr Mark Macleod said:
'The Year We Escaped by Suzanne Leal is a novel for older readers seen through the eyes of two Jewish girls in a World War II internment camp, and two French brothers who help them escape. Its publication comes at a moment of despair for many adults. It seems that even the billions of words already written about human suffering cannot prevent us repeating history. But for the young protagonists of this novel, lamenting the future or abandoning hope is simply not an option. Something can always be done.'
'The Year We Escaped is one of several books on this year's longlist that return to the period of alarming social change between the World Wars, but it feels fresh and is never didactic. Suzanne Leal allows today's young people to read between the lines and make their own historical connections. Here they experience how it feels to be the object of prejudice; how it feels to be without friends and without adult protection; how it feels to be without food or clean water. The fast-paced storytelling doesn't waste a word, as it gives an impeccably researched and compelling account of resistance, in which the ingenuity and courage of young people and the importance of working together are the keys to survival.'
Suzanne Leal was awarded $30,000 as the winner and $5,000 was awarded to each of the shortlisted authors: Anna Ciddor for Moonboy and Judith Rossell for The Midwatch.
Readers' Choice Award
Rapture
Emily Maguire
The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and devote her life to the study she is denied as a woman.
So begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of the revered Fulda monastery, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome. There, Agnes (as John) dazzles the Church hierarchy with her knowledge and wisdom and finds herself at the heart of political intrigue in a city where gossip is a powerful – and deadly – currency.
And when the only person who knows her identity arrives in Rome, she will risk everything to once again feel what it is to be known – and loved.
Read our staff review here.
This year, HNSA introduced their Readers’ Choice Award to give readers an opportunity to vote for their favourite Adult longlisted novel and they were delighted with the enthusiastic response for Rapture. Emily Maguire was presented with $5,000 for her win.
Read more about the ARA Historical Novel Prize and the judges' comments on the winners here.
