Melissa Lucashenko's Edenglassie Longlisted for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
Acclaimed Goorie (Aboriginal) author Melissa Lucashenko has been longlisted for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction — one of the world's most prestigious literary awards, worth £25,000 — for her epic novel Edenglassie.
Already the winner of eight major literary awards in Australia, including the $100,000 ARA Historical Novel Prize, the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction and the Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance, Edenglassie now enters contention for one of the UK's most coveted literary honours. The Walter Scott Prize, administered by the Abbotsford Trust from Sir Walter Scott's historic Borders home, celebrates the finest in historical fiction — a genre Scott himself helped create more than two centuries ago.
Edenglassie is a stunning dual-timeline novel spanning five generations of First Nations life in Brisbane — or Edenglassie, as the city was once briefly known. In 1854, Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita at a time when his saltwater community still outnumbers the British settlers. Tensions simmer beneath a fragile peace, but when colonial unrest tears through the region, Mulanyin's passion for his new bride clashes with his loyalty to a homeland in danger. Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny when her centenarian grandmother Eddie has a serious fall. A shrewd journalist turns Eddie into a local celebrity as "Queensland's Oldest Aboriginal," bringing past and present crashing together with consequences no one could have predicted.
Lucashenko is a Goorie author of Bundjalung and European heritage whose first novel was published in 1997. Her sixth novel, Too Much Lip, won the 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance. She is a Walkley Award winner for her non-fiction and a founding member of human rights organisation Sisters Inside. Tim Winton has described her as "one of our finest storytellers," while Vogue Australia declared: "Lucashenko is a national treasure: there are no two ways around it."
Lucashenko has said of the novel: "Edenglassie is a novel of fierce and compelling Aboriginal love. It's also a missive from Aboriginal Country, speaking back to those who tried very hard to engineer our destruction. I wrote this novel of humour, heartbreak and joy to show that we are still here, and we love and live on ancestral lands as we always have. Edenglassie peels back the blankets to reveal Aboriginal lives few outsiders ever witness: the lives of the world's oldest living culture, spanning five generations."
Edenglassie is one of twelve novels on the 2026 longlist, alongside works by John Banville, Graeme Macrae Burnet, Sarah Hall and Rachel Seiffert. Judges chair Katie Grant said: "The 2026 list spans all human experience and emotional intensity, with our authors crafting their work on both the small domestic canvas and broader, more epic scale."
The shortlist will be announced in April 2026, with the winner revealed in June at Abbotsford.