The Mountain (2012) is a novel by Australian author Drusilla Modjeska. It was shortlisted for the 2013 Miles Franklin Award.
Overview
The novel consists of two parts: "Book One" which features a group of ex-pat Australians and Papuans on a Papua New Guinea university campus in the period shortly before independence; and "Book Two", set after PNG independence and follows one character's journey back to Australia.
Critical response
Lloyd Jones in The Guardian noted that the novel is "a big and ambitious novel charting new territory in Australian contemporary fiction. There is much to admire.""The Mountain by Drusilla Modjeska - Review by Lloyd Jones", The Guardian, 13 June 2013 Eleanor Limprecht in The Sydney Morning Herald found the novel "is a complex, multi-layered novel, so that the central story is viewed through different angles, in different lights, and comes to mean many different things."The Mountain" by Eleanor Limprecht, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 May 2012
Awards and nominations
Year Award Category Result Ref 2013 ALS Gold Medal — Australian Book Industry Awards Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year Indie Book Awards Fiction Miles Franklin Award — 2014 Barbara Jefferis Award — References