Compassion is the dramatised life story of one of Julie Janson’s ancestors who went on trial for stealing livestock in New South Wales, and it is an exciting and violent story of anti-colonial revenge and roaming adventure. A gripping fictive account of Aboriginal life in the 1800s, Compassion follows the life of Duringah, AKA Nell James, the outlaw daughter of the Darug hero of Benevolence, Muraging.

The Award celebrates novels of the highest literary merit that tell stories about Australian life. The winner will receive $60,000. 

Judges comments 

“The limits of novelistic expression continue to be challenged in Australian letters. This year’s field of Australian novels judged for the Miles Franklin Literary Award encompassed a sometimes dizzying variety of writing. The novels enlarge our sense of what it is to be Australian as a diasporic nation with an ancient and living human history.” 

Julie is a Burruberongal woman of the Darug Aboriginal nation NSW. She is a novelist, playwright, and poet. While living in remote Northern Territory in Yolngu communities in her early years as a teacher, Julie wrote plays and made giant puppets, masks and costumes with Yolngu students. Her career as a playwright resulted in ten productions at various theatres such as Sydney St Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre and Sydney Opera House Studio. Black Mary and Gunjies was published by Aboriginal Studies Press. Her plays have been produced in Arizona, USA and Makassar, Indonesia.  Compassion (Magabala 2024) is a sequel to Benevolence.