More than 280,000 people have voted for the Top 100 Books of the 21st Century in a Radio National poll, with Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe taking the top spot. The vote considered books by Australian and overseas authors (fiction and non-fiction), with four of the top 10 and 26 of the top 100 being works written by Australians.
According to the ABC, the poll shows “Australian bookworms love a local writer”. Yet this list lacked the diversity reflecting our country. In particular, it gave little sense of the breadth, creativity and experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers.
Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu was the only Indigenous book to make the top 50 (number 18). Miles Franklin award-winners Carpentaria by Alexis Wright and Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko came in at numbers 82 and 81, respectively.
