Tim Winton’s 1991 novel *Cloudstreet* has been named Australia’s favourite book following a nationwide poll conducted by ABC Radio National. The poll, which aimed to identify the top 100 Australian books as chosen by readers, revealed Markus Zusak’s *The Book Thief* (2005) and Trent Dalton’s *Boy Swallows Universe* as the second and third most popular titles, respectively.

*Cloudstreet* is a family saga centering on two working-class families, the Lambs and the Pickles, who share a large house in postwar Perth over a period of 20 years. The novel, Winton’s fifth and ninth published work, won multiple awards upon release, including the Miles Franklin Award in 1992, and has since become a fixture in Australian literature education. It has sold hundreds of thousands of copies domestically and has previously topped similar polls, including a 2003 survey by the Australian Society of Authors and an earlier ABC poll the same year. The book was also included in a 2019 BBC list of “100 novels that shaped our world.”

This year’s ABC Radio National list spans a broad spectrum of genres and audiences, featuring adult and young adult fiction, nonfiction, children’s picture books, history, and cookbooks. Notably, *The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book* was ranked 22nd, while Stephanie Alexander’s *The Cook’s Companion* appeared at number 56. Nagi Maehashi’s *RecipeTin Eats: Dinner* was placed at 96.

Several prominent Australian authors had multiple works featured in the top 100, including Helen Garner, Melissa Lucashenko, Geraldine Brooks, Anna Funder, Peter Carey, and Hannah Kent. Children’s literature was also well represented, with books by Alison Lester, Paul Jennings, Mem Fox, Jeannie Baker, and Ruth Park making the list. The oldest work on the list was Marcus Clarke’s 1874 classic *For the Term of His Natural Life*, ranked at number 80. The most recent publications included Sally Hepworth’s *Mad Mabel* and Charlotte McConaghy’s *Wild Dark Shore*, both released in 2025.

Kate Evans, host of ABC Radio National’s literary program *The Bookshelf*, described the list as a reflection of the diversity of Australian reading tastes. She noted it encompassed “audacious literary fiction to historical accounts of who we’ve been and how we might understand all that complicated past, to joyful children’s books, Indigenous stories of both pain and humour, and many, many family stories.” Evans added that the variety on the list challenges simplistic assumptions about Australian readers’ preferences.