A “stunning” debut novel described as “unambiguously and distinctively Queensland” has won the $30,000 top prize at the Queensland literary awards (QLAs).
Meriam and Wagedagam author Lenora Thaker won the Queensland premier’s award for a work of state significance for her historical novel The Pearl of Tagai Town, which was inspired by her ancestors’ lives in an unmapped shantytown known as Cairns-Malay Town in far north Queensland. Cairns-Malay Town once housed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, as well as Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Malaysian and Sri Lankan residents who had been segregated from the white population; the shantytown existed from the late 1800s until the late 1950s.
