David Malouf, the acclaimed Australian author of books including Ransom, An Imaginary Life and the Booker prize-nominated Remembering Babylon, has died aged 92.

Malouf died on Wednesday, his publisher, Penguin Random House Australia, said in a statement on Thursday.

“We are deeply saddened to share that author and poet David Malouf AO has passed away,” the statement said. “David Malouf wrote across fiction, non-fiction, poetry, libretti and plays, and made a significant and continued impact on Australian literature.”

“David won numerous prizes for his work, including the Miles Franklin Award, Commonwealth Writers’ prize, the Prix Femina Etranger, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and Australia-Asia Literary Award. He was also an admired teacher and lecturer both in Australia and Europe.”

“Alongside his achievements as a writer, David was a loyal, loving friend to many and devoted to his family. He was a passionate supporter of Opera Australia, Adelaide Writers Week and the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.”

Born in Brisbane in 1934 to a Lebanese Australian father and an English-born mother of Portuguese and Sephardic Jewish descent, Malouf was an avid reader at an early age, reading the complete works of Shakespeare from the age of 10.

Malouf began writing poetry, usually about his childhood, his family, travelling and his connections to Europe and Australia; his first work was published in 1962. He was also known as a gifted short story writer, publishing five collections over three decades.

His first novel, 1975’s Johnno, was semi-autobiographical, following a young man growing up in Brisbane during the second world war.

His 1993 book, Remembering Babylon, made him a literary name: the tale of a young shipwreck survivor rescued and raised by Aboriginal people was shortlisted for the Booker prize. It also won the Commonwealth writers’ prize and the first International Dublin Literary award.

Much of Malouf’s writing focused on the past – his own childhood, on great myths, on colonial Australia.

“He has a poet’s sensibility, but there is nothing brazenly poetic about his prose,” Rick Gekoski wrote in the Guardian in 2011.

“One is constantly astonished by the vivacity and accuracy of the writing, and it is hardly possible to read a page of Malouf without a smile of delight and gratitude.”

Malouf’s final novel, Ransom, was published in 2009, after a 13-year gap between novels. The book, a retelling of Priam’s appeal to Achilles for the return of his son Hector’s body in the Iliad, received acclaim around the world and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary award. Malouf’s final published book was a volume of poetry, An Open Book (2018).

Malouf was also a fan of opera, sitting on the board of Opera Australia and writing criticism and several libretti himself, including an adaptation of Patrick White’s Voss.

The author was gay, and openly so for much of his life, but remained discreet in his relationships before and after fame arrived; close friends reported not knowing anything about his personal life.

He was often hailed by critics and other authors as a great chronicler of Australia, uniquely capturing something of its innate character, which he rejected.

“I don’t consider myself a representative Australian and I’m not a representative Queenslander,” he once said.

“I think each one of us is individual and we take exactly what suits us best. Whether we’re men, women, gay or ethnic, we take up what we can use. I think that’s one of the great privileges of being Australians. We have that kind of freedom and we’ve given up, I hope, the very narrow idea we have to think of ourselves as Australians. We can be whatever we want to be.”

Acclaimed Australian author Helen Garner said she would remember Malouf for his kindness, encouragement and love of laughter.

“David gave me a great deal of encouragement when I was starting out,” Garner said.

“He knew how to be useful when he saw a friend going down for the third time in a mess of her own making: his kindness in a crisis was imaginative and very practical. He was witty and he loved to laugh. In recent years our lives changed direction and we drifted apart. Foolishly, I imagined he would live on for ever in his high apartment up there in Surfers (Paradise). I’m shocked and sad to hear that he’s gone.”

Jon Ransom has taken home a Polari prize for the second year running, with his second novel The Gallopers winning 2024’s overall prize for books that “push the boundaries of LGBTQ fiction.”

Last year, the author’s debut novel The Whale Tattoo won the Polari first book prize, which has this year been won by Nicola Dinan for her novel Bellies. Meanwhile Sarah Hagger-Holt has been awarded the biannual Polari children’s and YA prize for her children’s story The Fights That Make Us.

The Gallopers is an emotional thriller that tells the story of three men across 30 years, taking in the homophobia they experience and their troubled relationships with themselves. Guardian reviewer Yagnishsing Dawoor described it as “a whispered howl of a novel about men fettered by masculine norms, the ideas and pressures that curtail their freedom and the bargains they strike with others and themselves in order to live.”

Journalist Suzi Feay, who judged this year’s headline prize, praised the novel’s ability to be “by turns tender and sinister, joy-filled and apprehensive, with a sure sense of historical perspective”, adding that “for Jon Ransom to have built upon the success of his Polari prize-winning debut so speedily is admirable.”

Bellies, a novel about friendship, first love and coming out as transgender was described as being “as deep as it is chic” by Jeremy Atherton-Lin in his Guardian review. Dinan’s second novel, Disappoint Me, is due out in January.

First book prize judge writer Karen McLeod said: “Bellies is a prescient, smart novel” and “as new and original as a queer novel can be. It will open many doors and conversations: an antidote for these troubled and divisive times.”

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Polari prize founder Paul Burston chaired the judging panels for both the first book and the overall prize. “At first glance, this year’s prize-winning novels couldn’t be more different – one contemporary, the other historical; one urban, the other rural; one exploring the trans experience from a modern British, cross cultural perspective, the other looking at working-class gay lives in 1950s Norfolk,” he said. “But both push the boundaries of LGBTQ fiction; both feature the formal device of a play within the main narrative; and both explore the loves and lives of queer characters in surprising new ways.”

Hagger-Holt’s The Fights That Make Us is a story about LGBT+ history and standing up for what you believe in. Chair of judges, the children’s author Jodie Lancet-Grant, said she and her fellow judges, teacher Rayyan Aboo, writer Erica Gillingham and librarian Zoey Dixon, “adored” Hagger-Holt’s book.

“We found the way that Sarah weaves two timelines together – one around growing up in the 1980s under Section 28 and one set in the present day – effective and moving”, Lancet-Grant said.

In contention for the children’s award alongside The Fights That Make Us were Bitterthorn by Kat Dunn, Out of the Blue by Robert Tregoning, Gwen and Art are not in Love by Lex Croucher and Away With Words by Sophie Cameron. The Gallopers was up against Killing Jericho by William Hussey, The Fitful Sleep of Immigrants by Orlando Ortega-Medina, Forty Lies by David Shenton, Blue Hunger by Viola Di Grado, translated by Jamie Richards and Hard Drive by Paul Stephenson for the main prize while Bellies took the first book prize over Neon Roses by Rachel Dawson, Local Fires by Joshua Jones, Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth, Greekling by Kostya Tsolakis and Transitional by Munroe Bergdorf.

EasyJet holidays announced a three-year partnership with the Polari prizes earlier this year, and all three winners will receive a package holiday of their choice, courtesy of the airline. Ransom will also win a £2,000 cash prize from sponsors DHH Literary Agency, while Dinan will be awarded £1,000 by sponsors FMcM Associates. Hagger-Holt will receive £1,000 from sponsors Ash Literary.

Burston and McLeod judged the first book prize alongside Ransom, author Rachel Holmes and co-chair of literature charity Spread the Word Simon Richardson. For the Polari book prize, Burston and Feay were joined by CEO of the National Centre for Writing Chris Gribble, author VG Lee, 2023 Polari book prize winner Julia Armfield and Garry Wilson, CEO of easyJet holidays.

The Polari is the UK and Ireland’s only dedicated LGBTQ+ book prize, launched in 2011. It is open to books about the LGBTQIA+ experience by authors who were born or live in the UK and Ireland.