A BOOK published by Penguin with the unlikely title of “Semut” (ant in Malay), has won Canberra writer Christine Helliwell the Australian War Memorial’s $10,000 Les Carlyon Literary Prize.

The winning non-fiction book, “Semut: The untold story of a secret Australian operation in WWII Borneo,” tells the story of a mission carried out by British and Australian operatives, who engaged the local Dayak people to white-ant (hence the title) Japanese military operations in what is now the Malaysian Sarawak.

First Runner Up in Britain’s most admired award for historical military history writing, the Templer Medal, the book was also shortlisted  for the NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize, the ACT Notable Book Awards, and the Reid Prize.

On hearing of her win, Helliwell said: “What a thrill to win this award. Especially when there were three other great books on the shortlist, any of which could easily have won it.

“Les Carlyon was a monumental figure in Australian writing: not only a great historian but a wonderful, wonderful wordsmith. It’s a huge honour to win an award that bears his name.”

An anthropologist of 40 years standing and now an emeritus professor at the ANU who, since 2014 has been researching World War II in Borneo, Helliwell spent many years as a young student living in longhouses in Borneo falling in love with the Dayak people.

Helliwell breathes life into her often dramatic account of the operation, presented to the locals as a move to defeat the Japanese but in reality designed to reinstate British rule in Borneo, something neither the Aussies nor the Dayaks knew.

A formally trained academic, Helliwell was well aware that books like this can end up on shelves unread, so she deliberately sought to make it as exciting as possible.

“I had to learn to write for the general public because academic writing is so different, so I took myself to a Dymocks for a day and sat there reading popular accounts of military history,” she told “CityNews”.

The results were palpable and on her Templar nomination,  Helliwell modestly described herself as “gobsmacked, if truth be told – I never imagined that ‘real’ military historians would much enjoy my little story about Dayaks during World War II”.

Australian War Memorial Director Matt Anderson said  “Semut” was a truly deserving winner, adding: “Author Christine Helliwell’s impeccable research and the readability of her writing will bring Australian military history to a new audience.”

The Les Carlyon Literary Prize, named after the late historian, journalist, newspaper editor who died in 2019, was set up to support writers and to find and encourage good storytelling in Australia.