In 2005 Andrew McGahan’s fourth published novel The White Earth won the prestigious Australian Miles Franklin Award, a prize inaugurated in the 1950s through the estate of the writer Stella Franklin. In giving McGahan the prize the Franklin judges noted that the author ‘subjects postcolonial Australia to a searing analysis.’ As they go on to say in the short paragraph published on the award’s website, McGahan ‘draws on the full resources of the novel as an imaginative form to explore some of the most urgent social and political issues haunting Australians today.’ They mention the two main characters—nine-year old William and his patron, his great uncle John McIvor. Throughout the novel the boy carries a festering, almost numbing wound in his ear. ‘William’s disease,’ the judges observe, ‘is literally the burden of the past’ (2005).