Far North Queensland-based author and former foreign correspondent Nicolas Rothwell has won the $80,000 Prime Minister's Literary Award for fiction for his third novel, Red Heaven, in a ceremony in Launceston on Tuesday afternoon that was disrupted midway through by a fire alarm.
The event was presided over by Susan Templeman, federal Labor MP and Australia's Special Envoy for the Arts, in the absence of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Arts Minister Tony Burke.
Red Heaven is a meditation on art, memory and relationships set in 60s Europe against the backdrop of the Cold War. It won this year's award against a shortlist that included Devotion by Hannah Kent (Burial Rites), and Dark as Last Night by Tony Birch (which won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for fiction earlier this year).
