Culture & Arts
• Analysis
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton voted Australia's favourite book in ABC Radio National poll
Tim Winton's Cloudstreet has been named Australia's favourite book in a nationwide top 100 poll run by ABC Radio National, with results announced on Sunday. Markus Zusak's The Book Thief came second and Trent Dalton's Boy Swallows Universe third.
By Haut Monde Post
• October 18, 2026
• 2 Min Read
A 1991 novel of two families
Cloudstreet, first published in 1991, follows two working-class families, the Lambs and the Pickles, who share a house called Cloudstreet in postwar Perth for 20 years.
An established classic
The winning book was Winton's fifth novel and ninth book. It won the Miles Franklin award in 1992, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies in Australia and is a fixture of English literature classes.
Its standing was already long established:
- •It topped a 2003 Australian Society of Authors poll of writers.
- •It also won a 2003 ABC public poll.
- •It appeared in the BBC's 2019 list of '100 novels that shaped our world'.
The rest of the top 100
The ABC Radio National poll covered a wide range of Australian literature, with the top 100 taking in adult fiction, nonfiction, young adult fiction, children's picture books, history and cookbooks.
Cookbooks fared well in the rankings:
- •The Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book ranked No 22.
- •Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion came in at No 56.
- •Nagi Maehashi's RecipeTin Eats: Dinner placed No 96.
Helen Garner, Melissa Lucashenko, Geraldine Brooks, Anna Funder, Peter Carey and Hannah Kent each had multiple books in Sunday's top 100. Books by children's authors Alison Lester, Paul Jennings, Mem Fox, Jeannie Baker and Ruth Park also featured in the final 100.
The earliest title on the list was Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life from 1874, at No 80. The most recent were Sally Hepworth's Mad Mabel and Charlotte McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore, both published in 2025.
What the host made of it
Kate Evans, host of ABC Radio National's The Bookshelf, said the list stretched from literary fiction to joyful children's books, Indigenous stories of both pain and humour, and many, many family stories.
This list defies any glib conclusions about how we read – and surely that's the point.
The poll's top 100, announced on Sunday by ABC Radio National, stands as published.
