Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser, winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin Literary Award, has won the 2013 Australian Literary Society Gold Medal.

The ALS Gold Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year. The Medal was inaugurated by the Australian Literature Society, which was founded in Melbourne in 1899 and incorporated into the Association for the Study of Australian Literature in 1982.

The judges said that “Questions of Travel embarks on an exploration of the present and emerging conditions of late modernity on a scale that could only be successfully achieved by a highly accomplished writer.

“Through her two central characters, Australian woman, Laura, and Sri Lankan man, Ravi, De Kretser creates an expansive fictional space that both traverses continents while never losing sight of the separateness of individual lives defined by their especial relationships to place and culture, new and old.”

Books on the Gold Medal shortlist included Darkness on the Edge of Town by Jessie Cole, Montebello by Robert Drewe, Lost Voices by Christopher Koch and The Fine Colour of Rust by P. A. O’Reilly.