Drylands

First edition
Author	Thea Astley
Country	Australia
Language	English
Publisher	Penguin Books, Australia
Publication date	1999
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	293
ISBN	0-670-88619-X
OCLC	42402469
Dewey Decimal	823/.914 21
LC Class	PR9619.3.A75 D79 1999
Preceded by	The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow
Followed by	-

Drylands (1999)^[1] (subtitled "A Book for the World's Last Reader") is a Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Thea Astley. This novel shared the award with Benang by Kim Scott.

Awards

• Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2000: joint winner^[2]
• Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, Best Fiction Book, 2000: winner^[2]

Review

• Goldsworthy, Kerryn (September 1999), "Undimmed Outrage, Fiction review", Australian Book Review, archived from the original on 2007-09-29
• Kerryn Goldsworthy: "Drylands is Astley's Waste Land, with a cast of exhausted and alienated characters wandering through it in the death-grip of entropy, pursued by fin-de-siècle furies and other personifications of failure and defeat. In the small town of Drylands there are no fragments shored against anybody's ruin (well, there are, but even the fragments get vandalized and tossed), and there is certainly none of the peace that passeth understanding."^[3]