The captivating tale of four women spanning continents and generations, bound by the legacies of their Greek ancestry and the enduring symbol of the mati, has won gold at the 2025 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards. Titled Matia, meaning ‘eyes’ in Greek, the debut novel by Emily Tsokos Purtill explores the lives of four generations of women as they adapt to new countries while holding on to their heritage.
The book captured the judges’ attention, earning the third-generation Greek Australian author first prize for Emerging Writer. Commenting on the novel, they wrote: “Matia expertly explores and evokes Greek migrant culture and experience through a beautiful use language and imagery. The interweaving of the characters is masterfully done, propelling the storyline with an elegant air of mystery and intrigue.”
Since its publication, Tsokos Purtill has been overwhelmed by the response.
“I have heard from readers all over Australia about how Matia has resonated with them on many different levels in terms of their family’s own experiences of coming from Greece to Australia and how the lives of our women have changed so much in such a relatively short period of time,” she told Neos Kosmos after receiving the award.
When the book first came out, Tsokos Purtill spoke to us about how the idea took hold. Though she herself did not migrate, she said she always wondered about the feeling of belonging, and how her ancestors created a home in a new land, or more importantly, how they carried home with them.
The story begins in 1945 with Sia, a young woman leaving Greece for Perth in search of a better life. She carries with her four prophecies from her island and four pieces of protective jewellery—matia—one for herself, her daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter.
The novel shifts back and forth in time, unravelling defining moments in the lives of its four protagonists. Their stories are connected through a long chain of memories, secrets, dreams, and prophecies, keeping the reader in suspense until the very end.
On receiving the award, the author expressed how honoured and grateful she feels, and said she is “deeply indebted to my publisher, Kate Pickard, at UWA Publishing, and the whole team that brought Matia to life.”
Looking ahead to its first anniversary, she added that she will be taking the book to Melbourne in October for a Q&A event at Readings at the State Library of Victoria on Tuesday 28 October, “where I will reflect on the amazing year that I have had with Matia out in the world.”
The winners of the 2025 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, announced on Friday 29 August at the State Library of Western Australia, shared a prize pool of $120,000.
Alan Fyfe won Book of the Year, sponsored by Writing WA, for his debut poetry collection G-d, Sleep, and Chaos, which also took out Poetry Book of the Year. Other winners included Kelly Canby with A Leaf Called Greaf (Children’s Book of the Year), Kate Emery with My Family and Other Suspects (Young Adult Book of the Year), Gerard McCann with Anatomy of a Secret: One Man’s Search for Justice (Non-Fiction Book of the Year), and Louise Wolhuter with Shadows of Winter Robins (Fiction Book of the Year). The Daisy Utemorrah Award went to Beau Windon for Jax Paperweight and the Neon Starway.
