Lies offend our sense of justice: generally, we want to see the liar unmasked and punished. But when the deception brings no material gain, we might also be curious about what purpose the lie serves – what particular need of their own the liar is attempting to meet. This is precisely what Grace Murray’s witty, assured debut explores: not just the consequences of a lie but the ways in which it can, paradoxically, reveal certain truths.

At a small liberal arts college in upstate New York, Charlotte begins her final year by claiming that her father has just died of a heart attack. In fact, he is alive and well back in Lichfield, England. This lie is the jumping-off point for an unpacking of Charlotte’s psychology, as well as the catalyst for her relationship with fellow student Katarina, a quasi-love story that forms the book’s main narrative.

Murray’s prose has an energising precision and originality, and the campus setting is a rich source of both comedy and social commentary. There’s some excellent art school satire throughout, as when Charlotte’s academic adviser tells her, by way of encouragement: “We don’t like failing people here.” She responds, laconically, “I know,” before silently reflecting on previous final projects students have turned in, including “de-shelled M&Ms; a bathroom selfie series; a felt-tip drawing of Jeff Buckley”. Murray’s comedy is perfectly judged throughout: it never overplays its hand or outstays its welcome.

But this is not primarily a comic novel, or if it is, it’s a very sad one. Charlotte’s relationship with Katarina has a doomed, precarious quality from the start, undermined not only by Charlotte’s deception but by her emotional detachment, her attempts to become, in her own words, “an emotionless eunuch”. With psychological acuity, Murray creates a distinct sense of the women’s opposing natures, Katarina’s buoyant sweetness contrasting with Charlotte’s coldness.

This kind of narrator can be tricky to pull off, creating a vacuum at the heart of a book. Murray seems well aware of this. Charlotte tells us: “My personality could be characterised by a distinct lack – of almost everything. Lying was one of the only things I did for myself, the only time I felt active, a real person, and I was good at it. But it was just another absence, this inability to be honest.”

Occasionally, in the first part of the novel, the dissociation of Charlotte’s voice might feel a little overdone (“When I came back, Lars was waiting for me, phone still in hand. I might have been crying – red-rimmed, a raw, bloated face – but it was hard to tell. I might have been fine”). But while some narratives eventually start to buckle under the weight of the voice, the opposite is true here. The cumulative effect is powerful, and there is a subtle shift as the novel goes on, a gradual increase in depth and emotion. Late on, Charlotte notes her own resistance to making fun of her slightly pathetic adviser, blaming Katarina for this alteration: “Before her, nobody had a context. She had opened me up to it, to the idea of the man’s twin bed, his daily teeter over to the sink, fluoxetine prescription in his cabinet.” By the end of the novel, the impact of Charlotte’s narration has changed from deliberately alienating to deeply moving, with scarcely a false note along the way.

With characteristic discernment, Murray resists any neat, sentimental resolution to the story. I had one reservation about the final quarter of the book, when a significant revelation lands that is suggested as at least a partial explanation for Charlotte’s lie. For me, the novel would have been stronger without this, or at least without it being presented as a late-stage reveal; the structure meant that this aspect felt a little underexplored. Overall, however, Murray displays keen narrative instincts and a perfect ear for prose.

It’s hard to make any reference to a young author’s age without sounding patronising, so I’m reluctant to labour the fact that Murray is just 22. But she deserves credit for, I assume, writing much of this novel before she was old enough to buy a beer in the country where it’s set. Not that she needs it; this is a superb debut for a writer of any age.

A first-time poet has won both the $100,000 Victorian prize for literature and the $25,000 poetry category at this year’s Victorian premier’s literary awards, becoming the first poet to win the overall award in a decade.

Selected from a record 807 books entered for the prize, Grace Yee won the awards on Thursday night for her debut collection Chinese Fish, which was initially part of her PhD on Chinese women writers in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and in part inspired by growing up in Aotearoa’s Chinese community, which dates back to the mid 19th century.

Speaking before she was aware she had won the overall prize, the now-Melbourne-based poet said she was “completely overwhelmed” to have won the poetry category.

“I still feel overwhelmed. I feel like it is such a little story, a kind of marginal story, and to have this kind of acknowledgment is astonishing,” she said.

Chinese Fish tells the story of Ping, who migrates from Hong Kong to New Zealand, and her eldest daughter, Cherry, as they both navigate patriarchy, racism, migration and assimilation in the 1960s and 1980s. The judges praised Chinese Fish for how it “intelligently … braids its modes and forms, its feminist vision, and its literary and conceptual sophistication”.

The Victorian prize for literature last went to a work of poetry in 2014, for Liquid Nitrogen by Jennifer Maiden. Yee’s win is the second victory in a row for Giramondo, whose author, Jessica Au, won the Victorian prize for literature last year for her much-lauded novel Cold Enough for Snow.

In other categories, Melissa Lucashenko won the fiction category for her novel Edenglassie, which spans the 19th century to the 21st century in the titular area of Meanjin/Brisbane. The judges praised the novel’s “luminescent truth telling”.

The non-fiction prize went to Ellen van Neerven for their book Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity, which the judges praised as a “groundbreaking book that confirms, once again, Van Neerven’s unrivalled talent, courage and originality”.

This year’s people’s choice award went to The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein. The book received 39% of all votes cast, with this year’s total tally of 1,567 public votes more than double that of last year.

After almost 30 years, a children’s literature category has been reintroduced, to reward books aimed at children under 12. This year it was won by the fantasy graphic novel Ghost Book by Remy Lai, which the judges called “a memorable interactive reading experience of wide appeal”. Lili Wilkinson won the young adult prize for A Hunger of Thorns, a fantasy novel following a young witch that was praised for its “strong feminist lens”.

Dramatists S Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack won the drama category for their script for The Jungle and the Sea, a Sri Lankan civil war drama first staged at Belvoir St theatre in Sydney, which the judges described as “a rich and essential work of contemporary theatre”.

Lucashenko and Van Neervan wore keffiyehs on stage to accept their awards, with Lucashenko and S Shakthidharan both reading poems by other writers in solidarity with Palestine, and Loewenstein paying tribute to the Palestinian journalists and civilians who have died in the war.

The prize for Indigenous writing was awarded to the ABC arts journalist Daniel Browning for his essay collection Close to the Subject: Selected Works, while the prize for an unpublished manuscript went to debut novel Panajachel by Rachel Morton.

The Victorian premier’s literary awards have been running since 1985.

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2024 Victorian premier’s literary awards: winners list

Victorian premier’s prize for literature: Chinese Fish by Grace Yee (Giramondo Publishing)

Prize for children’s literature: Ghost Book by Remy Lai (Allen & Unwin)

Prize for drama: The Jungle and the Sea by S Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack (Currency Press in association with Belvoir St theatre)

Prize for fiction: Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko (University of Queensland Press)

Prize for Indigenous writing: Close to the Subject: Selected Works by Daniel Browning (Magabala Books)

Prize for non-fiction: Personal Score: Sport, culture, identity by Ellen van Neerven (University of Queensland Press)

Prize for poetry: Chinese Fish by Grace Yee (Giramondo Publishing)

Prize for writing for young adults: A Hunger of Thorns by Lili Wilkinson (Allen & Unwin)

Prize for an unpublished manuscript: Panajachel by Rachel Morton

People’s choice award: The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein (Scribe Publications)

About the author

“This book is provocative, original, and timely, and takes an acutely political perspective to understand the religion and literature of the seventeenth century. It is sure to play an important role in shaping the field of early modern literature.”

—Brian Cummings, University of York

“Kasa reveals the dynamics at play in a Protestant literary culture in which ideas of empire, nation and individual agency were imagined anew. An important contribution to our understanding of political and religious thought as well as to literature studies.”

—Sarah Mortimer, University of Oxford