Safdar Ahmed’s Still Alive: Notes from Australia’s Immigration Detention System lands top prize and $30,000, alongside books by Tony Birch and Kate Holden
The quality of Niall’s writing is evident in An Accidental Career, though easily unnoticed. It lies in the clarity of her thought, her exact choice of words, the alternation of anecdote and reflection and the self-effacement that creates a direct link between the reader and the work itself. Her writing has the rare gift of simplicity. The precision of the title is characteristic of the book as a whole. By Andrew Hamilton