The 2025 winners of the Age Book of the Year awards have been announced! The Age Book of the Year Awards celebrate outstanding Australian works of fiction and nonfiction, awarding each winning author $10,000, thanks to the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
This year's awards went to an inventive novel from an Australian literary icon, and a heartfelt memoir about family.
The 2025 Fiction Book of the Year
Vortex
Rodney Hall
It is 1954, but not the same way the history books would have it. Events and characters swirl in a vortex of fragments and chance connections.
Brisbane celebrates the young Queen Elizabeth II's arrival on her first royal tour of the commonwealth. Meanwhile the future is being shaped behind closed doors, laying the foundations for the 21st century …
A magisterial novel resonant with contemporary concerns, by one of Australia's foremost authors writing at the height of his ambition.
The fiction judges – author and critic Bram Presser, and Age and Sydney Morning Herald Canberra bureau chief Michelle Griffin – praised the timeliness of Vortex:
'At a time when many will feel caught up in the vortex of global events, this novel feels both particular to its time and place and yet universal.'
The 2025 Nonfiction Book of the Year
Australian Gospel
Lech Blaine
Michael and Mary Shelley are Christian fanatics who loathe their fellow Australians – especially their 'foul language, reckless indulgence of alcohol and obsession with idiotic ball sports'.
Lenore and Tom Blaine are working-class Queensland publicans raising a large family in a raucous, loving, rugby-league-obsessed home.
There's just one problem. The Blaines are foster parents to three of the Shelleys' children, who were removed from Michael and Mary as infants. And the Shelleys are prepared to do anything to get them back. Anything.
Australian Gospel is a family saga like no other – heartbreaking, hilarious and altogether astonishing.
The non-fiction judges – author, reviewer and mission director of Caritas Australia, Michael McGirr, and author and director Lorin Clarke – described Blaine as:
'an exceptionally gifted storyteller, alive to all the nuances of character and the circumstances that shape the lives of people'
The Age Book of the Year awards were announced at the opening gala for the Melbourne Writers festival – read more about the event and the author's comments here, and explore the other great books from this year's shortlist here.
