Prime Minister's Literary Awards

The 2015 PMLA shortlists have been a long time coming, as many authors, booksellers, and publishers will attest. How fitting – after the debacle of 2014 (with its absurdities and subsequent justifications) – that it will be Malcolm Turnbull and not Tony Abbott who will announce the winners of these six lucrative prizes – sometime in December, we understand. We can be confident that this prime minister is unlikely to overturn the decisions of the judges – a notorious feature of last year's PMLAs, when Tony Abbott elected to split the fiction prize, despite the judges' unequivocal recommendation. The shortlists are fascinating, especially fiction, poetry, and Australian history.