| Year | Best Book | Best first book |
| 2006 | The Secret River
(Kate Grenville) | Suspended Sentences: Fictions of Atonement (Mark McWatt) |
| 2005 | Small Island
(Andrea Levy) | Purple Hibiscus (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) |
| 2004 | A Distant Shore
(Caryl Phillips) | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon) |
| 2003 | The Polished Hoe
(Austin Clarke) | Haweswater (Sarah Hall) |
| 2002 | Gould's Book of Fish (Richard Flanagan) | Ama, a story of the Atlantic slave trade (Manu Herbstein) |
| 2001 | True History of the Kelly Gang (Peter Carey) | White Teeth (Zadie Smith) |
| 2000 | Disgrace (J M Coetzee) | Prisoner in a Red-rose Chain (Jeffrey Moore) |
| 1999 | Eucalyptus (Murray Bail) | The Electrical Field (Kerri Sakamoto) |
| 1998 | Jack Maggs (Peter Carey) | Angel Falls (Tim Wynveen) |
| 1997 | Salt (Earl Lovelace) | Fall on your Knees ( Ann-Marie MacDonald) |
| 1996 | A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) | Red earth and Pouring Rain (Vikram Chandra) |
| 1995 | Captain Corelli's Mandolin (Louis de Bernieres) | Seasonal Adjustments (Adib Khan) |
| 1994 | A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth) | The Case of Emily (V Keith Oatley) |
| 1993 | The Ancestor Game (Alex Miller) | The Thousand Faces of Night (Gita Hariharan) |
| 1992 | Such a Long Journey (Rohinton Mistry) | Divina Trace (Robert Antoni) |
| 1991 | The Great World (David Malouf) | Shape-Shifter (Pauline Melville) |
| 1990 | Solomon Gursky Was Here (Mordecai Richler) | Visitors (John Cranna) |
| 1989 | The Carpathians (Janet Frame) | Women of Influence (Bonnie Burnard) |
| 1988 | Heroes (Festus Iyayi) | - |
| 1987 | Summer Lightning (Olive Senior) | - |
