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Omar Musa wins the Miles Franklin for 'Fierceland', a palm-oil family saga set in Borneo

Omar Musa, a 42-year-old novelist, poet and rapper from Queanbeyan in New South Wales, has won Australia's Miles Franklin Literary Award, worth $60,000, for his second novel Fierceland, The Guardian reported on August 5. He got the call while on honeymoon in the Philippines.

The book follows siblings Roz and Harun, who return from Sydney and Los Angeles to Malaysian Borneo, where Musa's family comes from, to face the legacy of their late father, a palm oil baron. The judges called it “a tour de force” that reshapes Malay hikayat storytelling “into new Australian idioms”. Musa told The Guardian he spent six years on it and the published text is the 21st draft, and that he moved for a time to Kota Kinabalu and talked to relatives who had worked on plantations.

“Fiction is a really radical form of empathy building” — Omar Musa, via The Guardian

The Guardian also noted that his win follows Malaysian-born Siang Lu's victory in 2025. Limelight said Musa was “completely blown away”, recalled that his first novel, Here Come the Dogs, was longlisted in 2015, and added that Fierceland had already won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction.

How each outlet framed it

• The Guardian — the personal story: honeymoon call, sobriety, grief and a family link to Borneo.
• Limelight — the arts-world record: earlier prizes and a book six years in the making.

What we don't know yet: Neither report names the other shortlisted novels. Musa says he will keep putting out poetry, and joked that after a flamenco class in Spain he might “get good at that”.