Ungraciously yours, Malcolm

Malcolm Fraser’s bio has won two major lit prizes. But what does he think of John Howard’s book?

Stephen Romei in The Australian:

It was Malcolm Fraser in a landslide at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, with the former Liberal prime minister collecting prizes worth $50,000, including for Book of the Year.

Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs won the $40,000 Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction and then picked up another $10,000 as Book of the Year, a surprise result in a category dominated by fiction in recent times.

Asked why political memoirs such as his and Mr Howard’s were doing well, Mr Fraser said: "They are two very different books."

Asked why his in particular had done well, the former Liberal prime minister said: "It is not a book of self-justification."

Source: The Australian

Stephen Romei on his blog:

I was a bit taken aback, when I asked Fraser about the success of John Howard’s book, at his response: that it was a very different book to his, as his was not an exercise in self-justification.

Source: The Australian