Vogel Quotes

The Yellow House by Emily O'Grady

'A spine-chilling & tightly woven story of the repercussions of horrific crimes & the way they can come to define a family and a town' - Ali Hammond, Dymocks

'Hearty congratulations to Emily O'Grady on being this year's Vogel Prize winner. Such an achievement. Emily's prose is sure and light as she delivers this compelling story about the fabulous character, Cub, and the confounding world she has been born into. A semi-rural setting, our endless fascination with the different faces of family dysfunction, a writing style that is full of light and shadow and grace, this story will be sure to leave the readers heart in their mouth.' - Suzy Wilson, Riverbend Books

'I so enjoyed reading this novel which kept me enthralled to the end. It is a taut and gripping story with emotional tension rippling through every page.' - Jenny Barry, Books Plus

The Lost Pages by Mariji Peričić

'...a strikingly assured and wonderfully original performance ... the fascination with obsession and identity, doubling and imposters, acquires real charge, provoking larger questions about the nature of literary identity, fiction and fictionality, and finally - and most satisfyingly - the fictionality of authorship itself.' - James Bradley, The Australian, May 2017

'The Lost Pages is an efficiently constructed narrative ... [its] creative approach to the historical record is both disorienting and refreshing.' - Gregory Day, The Sydney Morning Herald (Spectrum), June 2017

'An audacious fictional memoir [that] moves flexibly between pathos, humour and suspense ... there is always enough to drive the reader on to two shattering and unexpected denouements.' - Katharine England, The SA Advertiser, June 2017

'Farcical, surreal and utterly unique.' - Readings Monthly, September 2017

'A richly imagined story of the friendship, fraud, jealousy and betrayal within an extraordinary literary rivalry.' - The West Australian, May 2017

The Memory Artist by Katherine Brabon

'In this profound debut novel, Brabon draws upon theoretical models of memory, mourning and trauma... [in] a story of interlocking layers that questions the power of art... This is a novel that makes you question history.' - Claire Scobie, Sydney Morning Herald, June 2016

'An intelligent, moving, Russia-themed meditation…[this] emotional, historically acute novel is a stirring reminder that Australian literature can rise up to be anything it wants to be.' - Stephen Romei, Weekend Australian, April 2016

'This is a work of insightful exploration... Its contemplation of memory suggests rich reading in the field of trauma and narrative.' - Felicity Plunkett, Australian Book Review, August 2016

When There's Nowhere Left to Run by Murray Middleton

'There could only be one winner, and that was Murray Middleton with his wonderful collection of short stories. I think what we saw in that, what we all felt, was that quality that really great writing has. It felt like art. It was deeper, and more satisfying than anything else we read. And I think it was kind of amazing to find that in short stories, we all felt it and all agreed that it was the clear winner.' - Rohan Wilson - Vogel's Award winning author of The Roving Party, and To Name Those Lost

'Vivid and compelling, these short stories, which echo the experiences of modern life, are marked by strong settings and scenarios. Title story "When There’s Nowhere Else To Run" nails the pathos and awkwardness of dealing with the loss of a friend beautifully.' - Jenny Barry - BooksPlus, Bathurst

'Assured, witty and wise' - Stephen Romei - Literary Editor, The Australian

After Darkness by Christine Piper

'A brave, profound meditation on identity, trauma, loss and courage... reminds us that there are two sides to every war and that history never ceases to be written... A novel that demands its place alongside Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Mark Dapin's Spirit House.'

Stephen Romei, The Australian

'Piper draws us deeper and deeper into the compelling story of Tomakazu Ibaraki, a man whose strengths – discretion, honour and loyalty – also lie at the heart of his personal tragedy.'

Danielle Wood, winner of The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award in 2002

Eleven Seasons by Paul D Carter

'[Eleven Seasons'] account of a fatherless boy growing to manhood in suburban Melbourne is melancholy and occasionally brutal. That we come to care for a man whose progress is stumbling and whose actions are sometimes despicable is a tribute to Carter's empathetic powers.'

Geordie Williamson, The Weekend Australian



'Eleven Seasons is 11 fast-flowing chapters, a river sometimes turbulent, sometimes smooth, but always engaging. It's Australian and it's real.'

Harry Brumpton, Courier-Mail

'Carter captures the tensions of adolescence with accuracy.'

Novel of the Week, The Week, 1/6/2012



'Paul D. Carter hasn't played football since he was a child, but the spirit of hte game pulses across almost every page of his debut novel, Eleven Seasons... Carter's story joins an honour roll studded with literary heavyweights such as Time Winton and Kate Grenville.'

Melbourne Times Weekly

The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson

'This is a splendid first novel that succeeds admirably where others have sometimes come to grief. The Roving Party is distinguished by Wilson's tactful and restrained account of a brutal episode in the history of the conflict between European newcomers and the original inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land ... Wilson builds up a picture of a world out of joint, where the old ways have decayed. There is no preaching, no appeal to emotions or reliance on sensationalism. With a cool, Flaubert-like detachment,Wilson allows things to speak for themselves. But there is, of course, careful selectivity, an art that conceals its artfulness, at work here.'

The Sydney Morning Herald

'...an eloquence and intensity ... (The Roving Party) impelled the judges' attentions like no other book ... Wilson ...is a novelist born ... it is the language with which the author relates events that arrests the reader most. It is self-consciously archaic, comma-wary,a combination of fragments and rolling sentences that combine gruesome verisimilitude with hallucinatory flights. It immediately recalls the prose of that master of southern gothic, Cormac McCarthy. Yet the locale and the characters are so different it does not feel like pastiche. The style is renewed by the fresh world it is obliged to describe, and in doing so furnishes passages of graven elegance.'

The Australian

Night Street by Kristel Thornell

'Kristel Thornell's imagining of Clarice Beckett's life is elegant, potent and picturesque.'

Herald Sun



'Nothing much perhaps happens in the narrative, except a life devoted to painting – but that is enough. A book of beauty.'

Sunday Age



'Whether or not you are familiar with the work of Clarice Beckett, this sensitive novel about that talented young painter will captivate... Night Street is a beautifully paced read, and as atmospheric as a Clarice Beckett landscape.'

Bookseller & Publisher

Utopian Man by Lisa Lang

'Utopian Man is wonderfully rich in its narrative design and Lang does a brilliant job of returning Edward to life. If his enterprise ever wavers on the carnivalesque, it is tempered by Lang's subtle restraint, her language bright and affecting … This is a warm and intelligent novel, full of infective joy. It should come with a warning: reading this book may inspire you to do great things with your life.'

Australian Literary Review



'Lang draws skilfully on the conventions of the popular romance to play out Cole's wonderful contradictions, pitting reason against the imagination, light against dark and the goodness of man against the corruptive influence of self-interest. The work is a marvellous achievement.'

The Weekend Australian

Document Z by Andrew Croome

'...a story so gripping...that everyone will want to devour it. And so they should, both for its human interest and for its reminder of one of the most notorious episodes in our national history.'

Australian Book Review



'Croome negotiates the complexities of the troubled times and brings a particularly humane perspective to a story that continues to hold the popular imagination.'

The Weekend Australian

I Dream of Magda by Stefan Laszczuk

'The Magda Szubanski dream sequences are surreal, beautiful, literary… George's first person narration is honest, straightforward, often hilariously apt, and all too human… This is an absorbing novel and obviously well deserved its Vogel win. It should appeal to most sensibilities, old and young.'

Australian Bookseller & Publisher

The River Baptists by Belinda Castles

'A beautifully crafted sense of place and hypnotically perfect prose pull the reader in like the coming tide.'

Good Reading

'Castles builds tension to an almost unbearable level with lives at risk... I found it impossible not to read the novel in one sitting. Castles is a worthy winner of the 2006 Vogel Literary Award.'

The Courier Mail

Tuvalu by Andrew O'Connor

'What a novel it is, full of illusion, teasing us with its inconclusiveness, spinning bleak, intense humour from the straw of failed and doomed relationships... this novel is thoroughly enchanting. O'Connor guides us through Noah's misadventures with admirable deftness, bringing us to an ending that is a triumph of understated drama.'

The Weekend Australian

Road Story by Julienne Van Loon

'With Road Story... Julienne Van Loon shows she is an accomplished author with much to offer.'

The Australian

'Road Story is rich in detail, and Van Look beautifully captures the vast emptiness of the outback... Road Story is clearly the work of a talented writer.'

Canberra Times

The Alphabet of Light and Dark by Danielle Wood

'An impressive debut .. With The Alphabet of Light and Dark , Wood's assured sense of place and her confidence with language single her novel out as a distinctively mature work ... translucent prose.'

The Sunday Age

Skins by Sarah Hay

'Skins is an excellent first novel, tightly and evenly constructed, with an accessible, unobtrusive and unforced style'

Australian Bookseller & Publisher

'Sarah Hay's Skins [is] compelling... a powerful evocation of a time and place rarely featured in Australian literary fiction'

Australian Book Review

'Skins is an entertaining, absorbing, instructive novel, worthy of its 2001 Vogel Award'

Sydney Morning Herald

Love and Vertigo by Hsu-Ming Teo

'Well written, sharply observed, perceptive. Strong on characterisation and a sense of place'

Garry Disher

Lilian's Story by Kate Grenville

'Kate Grenville has transformed an Australian myth into a dazzling fiction of universal appeal. It is a pleasure to be able to praise a true novelist.'

Patrick White

'A very moving and sometimes very funny novel... The surprises and flourishes are in the evocative and poetic writing of the episodes every one of which reveals some detail of human frailness'

Elizabeth Jolley

Praise by Andrew McGahan

'McGahan's book is a bracing slap in the face to conventional platitudes and hypocrisies.'

The Weekend Australian

'Praise is one of those books that takes a hefty bite out of a piece of subject matter, chews it to a pulp and then spits it out.'

Peter Craven