Michelle de Kretser has just won the Best Book award in the South Pacific and South East Asian Region of the Commonwealth Writers Prize. She collects the NZ$2,700 award for The Hamilton Case, and moves on to the final stage of the Commonwealth Writers Prize.

The judges said:

The promise shown by de Kretser with her first novel, The Rose Grower, has been confirmed with her stunning second book and the judges believe she will go on to become one of Australia's leading contemporary writers with her distinctive and elegant style.

According to Random House’s publicity blurb, The Hamilton Case is themed around 1930s Ceylon:

Set amid tea plantations, decay and corruption, this sinuous, subtle, surprising novel is a masterly evocation of time and place, of colonialism and the backwash of empire.

Kretser was born in Colombo to a Sri-Lankan 'Burgher' family which emigrated to Australia when she was fourteen. She taught in Montpellier, took an MA at the Sorbonne, and worked for several years as an editor at Lonely Planet. She now lives in Melbourne.

Maurice Gee’s The Scornful Moon, also set in the 1930s and also with elements of social history, was apparently the judges’ second choice. According to an official statement:

The judges had great difficulty separating Gee's wry and elegant work from de Kretser's stylish and beautifully written novel. . . certainly both are truly exceptional works.

The prize for Best First Book went to Somewhere, Home by Australian writer Nada Awar Jarrar:

... Jarrar's exquisite debut novel was a clear winner with its three thematically linked stories of modern Lebanese women living in the shadow of war, displacement and exile. They are almost three novellas but are linked very cleverly and the whole is a triumph.

The final judging of the Commonwealth Writers Prize will take place in Melbourne between May 8 and 15. Previous winners include Janet Frame, Peter Carey and David Malouf.