Omar Musa has won the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award with Fierceland, a 60,000 AUD prize for his second novel, hailed by judges as a tour de force that refashions Malay storytelling into new Australian idioms.

Judges praised Fierceland for its rhythmic prose and moral center, blending Malay hikayat traditions with contemporary Australian idioms in a forest-centered world.

The novel is a sprawling family saga examining inheritance, complicity, colonialism, and environmental and social justice across multiple geographies, including Borneo and Australia.

Musa’s personal journey during writing—sobriety, marriage, and the loss of a best friend—shaped his exploration of grief in the book.

The narrative presents Yusuf as a corrupt palm-oil and logging magnate with possible links to disappearances, while foregrounding themes of personal and planetary redemption.

Musa aims to elevate Sabah and Sarawak voices in fiction and treats fiction as a vehicle for empathy and humane portrayal in a dehumanising society.

Travels to Sabah and his family’s palm-oil connections anchor the novel’s landscape and social dynamics.

Musa’s background—from Queanbeyan roots to Malaysia and Borneo, plus work as a hip-hop artist, visual artist, and slam poet—inform the book’s voice and sensibility.

The book’s settings span Nigeria in the 1970s, 19th-century Venice, and a forest court, all linked by environmental and social justice themes.

The writing process was arduous—six years and twenty-one drafts—with self-doubt and imposter syndrome preceding the prize win.

A central aim is reframing Heart of Darkness by granting agency to the forest and local voices, offering a respectful reimagining of nature.

Fierceland follows Musa’s earlier novel Here Come the Dogs, shifting focus from seafaring ambition to forest and land, exploring masculinity, race, and power.