Shankari Chandran’s "Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens", an intergenerational epic confronting Australia’s uneasy relationship with multiculturalism and postcolonial trauma, has won the 2023 Miles Franklin literary award.

• Chandran, a Sydney-based lawyer of Tamil heritage, collected the prestigious $60,000 award in Sydney .
• The judges praised Chandran’s third novel, set in an aged care facility in contemporary western Sydney and Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war, as an accomplished work of character, dialogue and action.
• Chandran’s parents, both doctors, fled Sri Lanka as the country stood on the precipice of civil war, first to the UK where the author was born, then to Australia three years later. Chandran grew up in suburban Canberra, in constant dialogue with herself about where she fitted in and the terms under which acceptance was granted.