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  • Published: 27 January 2016
  • ISBN: 9780143572831
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $26.00

Golden Boys




Sonya Hartnett's third novel for adults is utterly compelling, an unflinching and disquieting work from one of Australia's finest writers.

Shortlisted for the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Golden Boys is an unflinching and utterly compelling novel for adults by Sonya Hartnett, one Australia's finest writers.
With their father, there's always a catch . . .

Colt Jenson and his younger brother Bastian have moved to a new, working-class suburb. The Jensons are different. Their father, Rex, showers them with gifts – toys, bikes, all that glitters most – and makes them the envy of the neighbourhood.

To Freya Kiley and the other local kids, the Jensons are a family from a magazine, and Rex a hero – successful, attentive, attractive, always there to lend a hand. But to Colt he's an impossible figure in a different way: unbearable, suffocating. Has Colt got Rex wrong, or has he seen something in his father that will destroy their fragile new lives?

Sonya Hartnett's third novel for adults is utterly compelling, an unflinching and disquieting work from one of Australia's finest writers.
'Golden Boys has a line-by-line brilliance that is startling . . . [Hartnett] is one of Australia's most penetrating analysts of the travail and turmoil of families, especially as witnessed and suffered by the young.' Weekend Australian

  • Published: 27 January 2016
  • ISBN: 9780143572831
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $26.00

About the author

Sonya Hartnett

Sonya Hartnett's work has won numerous Australian and international literary prizes and has been published around the world. Uniquely, she is acclaimed for her stories for adults, young adults and children. Her accolades include the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Of A Boy), The Age Book of the Year (Of A Boy), the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize (Thursday's Child), the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year for both Older and Younger Readers (Forest, The Silver Donkey, The Ghost's Child, The Midnight Zoo and The Children of the King), the Victorian Premier's Literary Award (Surrender), shortlistings for the Miles Franklin Award (for both Of a Boy and Butterfly) and the CILP Carnegie Medal (The Midnight Zoo). Hartnett is also the first Australian recipient of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (2008).

Golden Boys, Sonya’s third novel for adults, was shortlisted for the 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award. She also published her fourth picture book, Blue Flower, illustrated by Gabriel Evans, in 2021 and it was shortlisted for the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award.

Also by Sonya Hartnett

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Awards & recognition

Indie Award

Winner  •  2015  •  Fiction

Australian Book Industry Awards

Shortlisted  •  2015  •  Literary Fiction

NSW Premier's Literary Awards

Shortlisted  •  2015  •  Christina Stead Prize for Fiction

Prime Minister's Literary Award

Shortlisted  •  2015  •  Fiction

The Miles Franklin Literary Award

Shortlisted  •  2015  •  Fiction

Victorian Premier's Literary Award

Shortlisted  •  2015  •  Fiction