Tim Winton wins Miles Frankiln Award

Breath by Tim Winton has won the Miles Franklin Award for 2009.

The award is Australia's most important literary prize. Winton has also won in 1992 with Cloudstreet and in 2002 for Dirt Music, which was shortlisted the same year for the Man Booker Prize. Breath, which follows the life story of Bruce 'Pikelet' Pike who as a young boy learns to surf with his friend, was described by judges as 'a searing document about masculinity, about risk, and about young people's desire to push the limits'.

The win means Winton enters the record books as the only author to take the Miles Franklin Literary Award four times as the sole winner