ABSTRACT
Although lacking the international recognition of The Booker Prize, the Miles Franklin Award is Australia’s most prestigious literary prize. It was established in 1954 through a bequest from the Australian novelist Miles Franklin. She had spent time in America and so was aware of the lack of any Australian equivalent to the Pulitzer Prizes. For six years I had the pleasure of being a judge of the Award and this chapter’s reading of the covers of some recent Australian novels in relation to their production and reception was inspired by the many examples I saw each year. Initially I was concerned about the impact a less than enticing cover might have on the sales of a book I considered deserved more notice. Subsequently I became interested in the reasons why covers of Australian novels were almost always altered when these works achieved release in Britain and the USA. This occurs even when covers and other paratextual elements make a significant contribution to the meaning of a postmodern text, as with the Flanagan and Hooper novels discussed below.
