NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

The State Library of NSW consulted with our Public Library Service (the State Library of NSW engages with more than 300 public libraries in NSW) and public library staff, inviting them to consider which book they would like us to nominate for the Dublin Literary Award. Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow was a top pick, shortlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize and recipient of various other awards, including the Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year Award. Set in Melbourne at the tail end of the pandemic lockdowns (Melbourne had some of the highest number of lockdowns in the world), it has been hailed as ‘a triumph of restrained and tender storytelling’, a narrative that ‘evokes how we get stuck in lonely orbits around each other and charts with well-earned hope one family’s slow progress back toward a common world again’ (Books + Publishing). This is a story of how creatures can reflect our deepest hopes and fears back to us, while opening your heart to them can in fact reconnect us to one another – and isn’t hope and connection what each of us seeks in our lives (both literary and real)? The author, Melanie Cheng, is a writer and general practitioner. She worked as a doctor throughout the pandemic, performing nasopharyngeal swabs on suspected cases. And while she didn’t want to revisit that bleak period, its themes of loneliness, uncertainty and hope for reconnection are perhaps most vividly felt during that time. Speaking about her inspirations for writing the book, Cheng said: ‘ I wanted to write towards the fear and vulnerability I’ve felt since becoming a parent—specifically, the terror of losing a child. I also wanted to explore the crazy and contradictory emotions that parents, particularly mothers, can feel at any moment: love and deep affection comingling with resentment and rage[…]Impossible tragedies occur and people who have direct and even indirect experience of them like to see these events reflected in the literature they consume, particularly if the stories are handled with care and they contain a thread of hope.’ With many Australian writers and readers calling The Burrow ‘a gift of a novel’, we hope it is also a small gift for your judges. (State Library of NSW)