Literary prizes remain a lottery. Is there a better way? We’re sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later. Dismiss Normal text size No one would argue that Amanda Lohrey doesn’t deserve her Miles Franklin win for The Labyrinth. She’s at the peak of her game after decades of impressive work dissecting the hearts and minds of Australians. But should there be a Miles Franklin award at all? Some don’t think so. Critic David Free thinks that literary prizes are such a terrible idea that he turned down the chance to be a judge himself. Apart from the time and effort involved, “the prospect of sitting down with a couple of strangers to haggle about our respective tastes in literature struck me as radically unappealing”, he wrote in this newspaper. “With me on it, the panel would probably end up picking a book that was nobody’s favourite.”