JUST four weeks after having won the Australian War Memorial’s $10,000 Les Carlyon Literary Prize, Canberra writer Christine Helliwell has been announced as one of the winners in the 2022 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for her non-fiction book, “Semut: The untold story of a secret Australian operation in WWII Borneo”.

The award was announced in Launceston today, (December 13) by Arts Minister Tony Burke.

Apart from Helliwell in the category of Australian history, the winners were: in fiction, Nicolas Rothwell for “Red Heaven”; in poetry, Andy Jackson for “Human Looking”; in non-fiction, Mark Willacy for “Rogue Forces: An Explosive Insiders’ Account of Australian SAS War Crimes in Afghanistan”; in young-adult literature, Leanne Hall for “The Gaps”; and in children’s literature, Sherryl Clark, with illustrations by Briony Stewart for “ Mina and the Whole Wide World”.

The judges shortlisted 30 titles from more than 540 eligible entries. The winners each receive $80,000 tax-free, with shortlisted authors receiving $5000 each.

Helliwell is an ANU anthropologist-turned war historian and narrator who spent years living in Borneo longhouses for her academic studies.

“Semut” (ant in the Malay language), published by Penguin, deals with the little known 1945 covert operation in World War II carried out by British and Australian operatives, who engaged the local Dayak people to white-ant (hence the title) Japanese military operations in what is now the Malaysian Sarawak.

An exciting, sometimes almost racy account of the operation in Borneo, which brings to life the Dayak peoples of the interior as well as the machinations of the Aussies and the Brits, the book  was also runner up in Britain’s Templer Medal for military history and shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize, the ACT Notable Book Awards, and the Reid Prize.