A novel set in the Cold War era in Australia is this year's Australian/Vogel Literary Award winner.

Andrew Croome receives $50,000 as prize and advance for his winning manuscript Document Z, which will be published by Allen & Unwin. The judges also awarded a runner-up prize, to The Heaven I Swallowed by Rachel Hennessy.

One of the judges, Matt Rubenstein commented that Document Z was a ‘remarkable achievement... a story that is emotionally and politically complex as well as consistently human... distinctive and significant.'

Croome is currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Melbourne University. He told ABC News he chose the Petrov Affair as his basis because he was ‘really looking for a topic that could sort of take off ... looking for an event in Australian history that had a lot of archival material based around a lot of physical documentation that I could work through'. Document Z is his first completed manuscript.

For more information on the winner, runner-up and shortlist, including extracts, see the A&U website here.

Source: http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2008/09/09600/

This article from Thorpe Bowker's Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

Tags: andrew croome, matt rubenstein, rachel hennessy