Omar Musa might be best known for off-the-cuff versifying, but he’s won the Miles Franklin Literary Award with a novel that took him six years to write.

Omar Musa might be best known for off-the-cuff versifying, but he’s won the Miles Franklin Literary Award with a novel that took him six years to write.

Omar Musa finds novel writing a slog, but judges of this year’s literary fiction prize have described his winning novel as nothing less than a tour de force.