A novel that explores what it means to be Australian
Shankari Chandran’s ‘Chai Time in Cinnamon Gardens’ (Ultimo Press 2022) has won the 2023 Miles Franklin Award, Australia’s biggest literary prize. This is the third book authored by the Sydney-based mother of four, whose parents emigrated from Sri Lanka in the 1980s.
Shankari Chandran in Colombo in 2018 (File photo)
The Miles Franklin Award was established in 1954 by the estate of ‘My Brilliant Career’ author Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin to celebrate the Australian character and creativity. It supports the betterment of literature by each year recognising the novel of the highest literary merit which presents Australian life in any of its phases.
“It’s such an honour to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award, honestly, I’m still in shock. To be recognised among my Australian writing peers in this way is extraordinary. It means so much to me that Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, a novel that explores what it means to ‘be Australian’, has been recognised in this way,” Chandran is quoted as saying on winning the award.
A multifaceted story of race and identity, Chai Time in Cinnamon Gardens makes for uncomfortable but compelling reading. The story plays out through a group of quirky residents and staff of an aged care nursing home called Cinnamon Gardens run by a Sri Lankan migrant couple who fled the country to escape civil war. The key characters are mainly Sri Lankan migrants to Australia: Maya Skiskanandarajah and her husband Zakir Ali; Cedric, who founded the home; Ruben, a care support worker; Aanjali and Nathan, Maya and Zakir’s daughter and son-in-law. Nikki, a doctor at the aged care home and her husband Gareth, who works at the local city council, are the central Caucasian characters.
The narrative jumps back and forth between generations, and present Australia and the past in Sri Lanka, unravelling a tale of family, love, friendship, loss, grief and recovery, and raising important issues about identity, racism and colonisation.
Chai Time’s lightweight appearance with a cheerful cover and a title denoting tea-time at a nursing home is deceptive. Both the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC headlines called the book a “Trojan Horse” novel, a metaphor Chandran told the Sydney Morning Herald, coined by her publisher, Robert Watkins “… because you think you’re picking up a quirky, cute novel about eccentric characters in a nursing home, and then you get to about page 20 and you’re like, ……, it’s really not.”
Whilst Maya, Zahir and Ruben have moved on in life, they are shadowed by the trauma of the past. Zakir and Cedric, once neighbours in Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo 7, reconnect at the nursing home, their new home. Over time, an increasing migrant population changes the demographics of the neighbourhood, creating racial tensions and prompting racist attacks on brown people. Discovery that a statue of Captain Cook had been removed from the Cinnamon Gardens grounds in its early days escalates these tensions and results in racial violence.
The story is narrated from diverse perspectives through the voices of the key characters, revealing the human side of each player and how deeply personal motives can become political.
A joint statement issued by the judges states that Chai Time treaded “carefully on contested historical claims, reminding us that horrors forgotten are horrors bound to be repeated, and that the reclamation and retelling of history cannot be undertaken without listening to the storytellers amongst us.”
Chandran has drawn on her own personal experiences in moulding the story. Her grandmother, a resident of an aged care home, is the inspiration behind the central character Maya and the nursing home setting. Maya’s efforts to become a successful author in Australia mirror Chandran’s own early experience of rejection when attempting to find an Australian publisher for her own first novel, ‘Song of the Sun God’, which was published by Perera-Hussein Publishing in Sri Lanka. Chandran’s win reflects the sea change that has occurred in Australian publishing between then and now.
This is not her first win. Song of the Sun God was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award (2019) and short-listed for Sri Lanka’s Fairway Literary Award (2018). Her second novel, The Barrier, was short-listed for the Norma K. Hemming Award for Speculative Fiction (2018).
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