Alex Miller’s novel Landscape of Farewell has been awarded the prestigious Chinese literary award, ‘Annual Foreign Novels, 21st Century’. The award is administered by the People’s Literature Publishing House, who ask literature specialists to vote annually for the best foreign novels of the 21st century. Each year, six of the best novels published in Europe, North America and Latin America are selected for translation and publication in China.

Alex Miller is the first Australian novelist to be honoured with this prestigious international award. The news follows a year of recognition for the twice-Miles Franklin and overall Commonwealth Writers Prize winning Australian author, who was also awarded the 2008 Manning Clark House National Cultural Award (announced 15 December 2008). In 2008, Landscape of Farewell was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the NSW Premier’s Award for Fiction, and longlisted for the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award.

Last year the ‘Annual Best Foreign Novels, 21st Century’ was won by the 2008 Nobel laureate for Literature, French novelist Jean-Marie Le Clezio. It was also previously awarded to British author Julian Barnes for his novel Arthur & George.

The five other honoured titles are: Oe Kenzaburo (the Nobel laureate for Literature in 1994), a novel (Japan); Luis Leante, Mira si yo te querré (Span); Julia Franck, Die Mittagsfrau (Germany); Pierre-Jean Rémy, Le plus grand peintre vivant est mort (France); Karen Ardiff, The Secret on My Face (Ireland), Russell Celyn Jones, Ten Seconds from the Sun (UK); and, Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End (US).

Alex Miller with Landscape of Farewell was one of the 2007-08 Summer Read and Bedside Books Club authors.

Alex Miller is the 2008 winner of the prestigious Manning Clark National Cultural Award.  The award is given each year for an outstanding contribution to the quality of Australian cultural life.  Nominations from all fields of art, science, intellectual endeavour, technology and sport are eligible.  The award is in recognition of the outstanding cultural significance of Miller’s body of work.

Alex Miller is one of Australia’s best loved writers.  He has published eight novels, the most recent the critically acclaimed LANDSCAPE OF FAREWELL (Allen & Unwin 2007).  Miller is twice winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia’s premier literary prize, and is an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize.