Blackmans Bay author Lenny Bartulin’s novel The Unearthed has been shortlisted for the 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize.
Lenny is guaranteed to receive a $5000 prize as one of the three shortlisted novels in the adult’s category and is in the running to win the grand prize of $100,000, which will be announced on Wednesday, October 23.
The ARA Historical Novel Prize has been running since 2020, with the prize open to novels with most of their narrative taking place at least 50 years ago.
The Unearthed follows Antonia Kovács, who returns home to her retired police inspector father in Queenstown after decades-old human bones are discovered in the West Coast wilderness.
The novel was inspired by Lenny’s childhood trips to the West Coast with his family in the 1970s, starkly different to the ‘genteel’ suburbs of Hobart that he knew.
“I’d always wanted to address that drama in my writing by setting something there, but it wasn’t until my fifties that an idea began to coalesce,” Lenny said.
“It was during this time that I got a distinct sense of that world slipping away, as those generations who worked there left us, and I was inspired to capture some of that time in a novel.
“My hope is that readers are left with a sense of how transient our lives are, and that this fleetingness should remind us to take deep notice of all our passing moments.”
Lenny finds the beauty of Blackmans Bay Beach a welcome site to start his writing day.
“I wake very early to write (4.30am) and can hear the waves breaking in the dark, and then see the sun start to peek up over the horizon as I finish my morning session,” Lenny said.
“So even a bad writing day isn’t too bad at all.”
Lenny is joined on the adult shortlist by Melissa Lucashenko with her novel Edenglassie and Tony Birch’s Women & Children.
“Selected from over 130 entries, the 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize shortlists demonstrate the power of the historical fiction genre to recover lost, overlooked or deliberately erased histories while illuminating what is often hidden and unspoken in society today,” Historical Novel Society of Australasia Chair Elisabeth Storrs said.
