The category winners in this year’s book awards have just been announced. Find out below what the judges have to say about each of these excellent books, then click through to our website to find out more and to secure your copies. We can send your books by overnight courier, or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION

Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Delirious is an unforgettable work of fiction that navigates momentous themes with elegance and honesty. With a gift for crisp, emotionally rich digression, Damien Wilkins immerses readers in Mary and Pete’s grapples with ageing and their contemplations of lost loved ones who still thrive in vivid memories. What stood out to the judges was the assured but understated touch of prose as it flows elegantly across decades, threads the intricacies of relationship, and fathoms the ongoing evolution of a couple’s grief. Wilkins manages to contend with colonialism, racism, and climate change while remaining intimate, funny, and, above all, honest. Delirious is an absorbing, inspiring novel, and a damn fine read.

MARY AND PETER BIGGS AWARD FOR POETRY

Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit by Emma Neale (Otago University Press)
Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit displays an exceptional ability to turn confessional anecdotes into quicksilvery flashes of insight. It's a book about fibs and fables; and telling true stories which are perceived by others as tall stories; and the knock-on or flow-on effects of distrust, the scales dropping from one's eyes. It's about power and a sense of powerlessness; it's about belief and the loss of belief, it's about trust and disillusion; it's about disenchantment with fairytales. It's about compassion. Emma Neale is a writer fantastically sensitive to figurative language and its possibilities. There's also scepticism, a sense of malaise and unease, but bolstered by a quick wit, liveliness and humour, where thought moves through the lines, arriving simultaneously with the word.

BOOKHUB AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION

Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art by Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu), Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) and Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī) (Auckland University Press)
Described as groundbreaking, a landmark publication and a ‘bold and ambitious endeavour’, Toi Te Mana is a comprehensive survey of Māori art. Twelve years in the making, extensively researched and thoughtfully written, it casts a wide inclusive net. The result is a beautifully designed visual tour de force of images both newly created and archivally sourced, and a cultural framework that approaches toi mahi with intelligence and insight. This is a book of enduring significance with international reach.
Toi Te Mana is dedicated to the late Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, one of the three authors responsible for this magnum opus. The judges congratulated Professors Deirdre Brown and Ngarino Ellis for carrying the baton to completion, a herculean task akin to the mahi of Maui himself.

GENERAL NON-FICTION AWARD

Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery by Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku (Te Arawa, Tūhoe, Ngāpuhi, Waikato) (HarperCollins Publishers Aotearoa New Zealand)
Hine Toa is a rich, stunningly evocative memoir that defies easy categorisation. As well as painting a vivid picture of Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku’s early life, from her childhood on 'the pā' at Ōhinemutu to her many creative and academic achievements, it is also a fiery social and political history that chronicles the transformative second half of the 20th century in Aotearoa from a vital queer, Māori, feminist perspective. From its extraordinary opening sentence, it weaves Māori and English storytelling traditions: “Once upon a time there was a pet tuatara named Kiriwhetū; her reptile skin was marked with stars.” Hine Toa is both a personal testimony and a taonga, and it was a clear winner for the judges.

MĀTĀTUHI FOUNDATION BEST FIRST BOOK AWARDS

HUBERT CHURCH PRIZE FOR FICTION

Poorhara by Michelle Rahurahu (Ngāti Rahurahu, Ngāti Tahu–Ngāti Whaoa) (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Poorhara is a road trip novel unlike any other. Two cousins, Erin and Star, pile into a 1994 Daihatsu Mira in a desperate bid to escape the suffocation of racism and poverty, the rigid expectations of whānau, and the trajectory of their own pasts. The judges were impressed by the urgency of Michelle Rahurahu's tragi-comic crises and the clarity of her depiction of colonialism, a presence in the book as incessant and rotten as Star’s relentless toothache.

JESSIE MACKAY PRIZE FOR POETRY

Manuali'i by Rex Letoa Paget (Saufo'i Press)
This debut collection from Rex Letoa Paget convinces through an incantatory lyricism and chant-like rhythms that surge like ocean waves. Manuali'i ensnares and uplifts; it carries us with it through its propulsive lyrical momentum.There's a freshness and an optimism to the poems which work as semi-parables about self-growth and self-realisation: they are celebratory or elegiac bricolages, each a melange of urban realism and Pasifika mysticism. With its flow and flux, its tonal patterns and subtle imagery, Manuali'i delivers a powerful new voice.

JUDITH BINNEY PRIZE FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION

Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa by Kirsty Baker (Auckland University Press)
An academic tome on the expansiveness and diversity of women’s art practice in Aotearoa, Sight Lines is derived from author Kirsty Baker’s doctoral thesis, and complemented with essays from eight other contributors. The book traverses many artforms and does a stellar job providing a vista through New Zealand art history across time, space and place. Liberally illustrated, with intentional, subtle design, Sight Lines will likely become a go-to text for tertiary art history students, and a point of reference within the country’s art analysis literature.

E.H. McCORMICK PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION

The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
We are living through terrifying times – perhaps a mass extinction event – and that can be hard to think about. In this singular essay collection, Una Cruickshank uses pearls, jet, amber, coral, and other biogenic talismans to open new perspectives on climate change, humanity, and maybe even hope. The Chthonic Cycle is bold and convention-breaking, and unlike anything the judges had read before.

Read what the judges have to say about each of this year’s short-listed books and then click through to our website to secure your copies. We can dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door.

The International Booker Prize celebrates works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English. You will find all of these books very well written and translated, deeply interesting, and satisfyingly horizon-broadening.

A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson
What the judges said: ”Anne Serre’s short novel is the deeply romantic telling of a platonic love story between the narrator and his complicated childhood friend, Fanny; a story so beautifully realised — and translated so sensitively by Mark Hutchinson — that the pair become part of the life of the reader. A perfectly balanced book, slender in size but bearing significant weight all the way through, A Leopard-Skin Hat is testament to the ways in which we continue to hold the people we love in our memories, with respect and dignity, after they die.”

• Read an extract.

• An interview with the author and the translator.

• A reading.

On the Calculation of Volume: I by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland
What the judges said: “On the Calculation of Volume I takes a potentially familiar narrative trope — a protagonist inexplicably stuck in the same day — and transforms it into a profound meditation on love, connectedness and what it means to exist, to want to be alive, to need to share one’s time with others. The sheer quality of the sentences was what struck us most, rendered into English with deft, invisible musicality by the translator. This book presses its mood, its singular time signature and its philosophical depth into the reader. You feel you are in it, which is sometimes unnerving, sometimes soothing, and this effect lingers long after the book is finished.

• Read an extract.

• An interview with the author and the translator.

• A reading.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda
What the judges said: “Hiromi Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird tells the story of humanity’s evolution on an epic scale that spans as far into the future as the human imagination could possibly allow. In each of its chapters, separated by eons but gracefully unified under the crystalline clarity of Asa Yoneda’s seemingly timeless translation, a variegated cast of posthuman characters each interrogate what it means to be not an individual or a nation but an entire species, that unit of being we currently and urgently struggle so much to grasp, much to the cost to the planet we live on and our own survival.”

• Read an extract.

• An interview with the author and the translator.

• A reading.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes
What the judges said: “An astute, discomfiting, cringe-making and often laugh-out-loud funny portrait of everyday privilege and modern aspirations, following an expat couple in Berlin. Tom and Anna are defined by their material lives, working their way through a tick-list of clichés readers will recognise in themselves and experience as a dig in the ribs. Compassionate as well as cynical, the book – in an exquisite, precise and perfectly executed translation from Italian by Sophie Hughes – holds up a mirror up to the way so many people aspire to and are let down by today’s off-the-shelf measures of success. A startlingly refreshing read.”

• Read an extract.

• An interview with the author and the translator.

• A reading.

Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson
What the judges said: “Following the disastrous deaths of 27 people, when a dinghy capsises while crossing the Channel, the book’s narrator — who works for the French authorities and who had refused to send a rescue team — attempts to justify the indefensible and clear her conscience. In a world where heinous actions often have no consequence, where humanity’s moral code appears fragile, where governments can condemn whole swathes of society to poverty or erasure, Small Boat explores the power of the individual and asks us to consider the havoc we may cause others, the extent to which our complacency makes us complicit — and whether we could all do better. A gut-punch of a novel.”

• Read an extract.

• An interview with the author and the translator.

• A reading.

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi
What the judges said: ”In a dozen stories — written across three decades — Banu Mushtaq, a major voice within progressive Kannada literature — portrays the lives of those often on the periphery of society: girls and women in Muslim communities in southern India. These stories speak truth to power and slice through the fault lines of caste, class, and religion widespread in contemporary society, exposing the rot within: corruption, oppression, injustice, violence. Yet, at its heart, Heart Lamp returns us to the true, great pleasures of reading: solid storytelling, unforgettable characters, vivid dialogue, tensions simmering under the surface, and a surprise at each turn. Deceptively simple, these stories hold immense emotional, moral, and socio-political weight, urging us to dig deeper.”

• Read an extract.

• An interview with the author and the translator.

• A reading.

The Republic of Consciousness Prize recognises the vital role of small presses (those with fewer than five employees) in bringing excellent and often sidestream fiction to publication. There are always new and satisfying discoveries to be made on this list. Small presses enlarge the gene-pool of literature, allowing new possibilities and evolutions. Read what the judges have to say about the short-listed books this year, and make your selection. Books can be dispatched by overnight courier or collected from our door.

CÉLINA by Catherine Axelrad, translated by Philip Terry (Les Fugitives) $38
“Célina is a quiet book, written with great integrity. It tells the story of a young woman, born into poverty, who works as a maid in the household of Victor Hugo. In restrained and unsentimental prose it illuminates lives forgotten by history.”

In the late 1850s, Célina, a young girl aged fifteen, takes up work as a maid for the Hugo family in Guernsey. There she encounters the delicate balance between the professional and the personal, and the obligations upon her as her livelihood is at stake. Célina navigates a life of hardship and loss, but not without crucial moments of pleasure and pride. In a voice full of the innocence of youth, yet studded with fine observations about her surroundings, her perspective offers a nuanced, potentially challenging portrait of the man and the artist. Axelrad's fictional account is based on cryptic notes found in Victor Hugo's diaries as well as letters from his wife.
”Pitch-perfect, and so light yet so profound. All of Axelrad's books have at their centre a silent, vulnerable young woman, but also one who is tough and resilient, totally unsentimental but deeply responsive and actually very intelligent. How such a person emerges out of such apparent silence is the wonder of her work. Célina is as quiet and devastating a novel as I have read in a long time. Unforgettable.” —Gabriel Josipovici
”Living in exile in the Channel Islands, the irrepressibly philandering author of Les Misérables went through what is called his ‘Chambermaid Period’. In this moving short novel, Catherine Axelrad gives us the great man and his retinue, his house and his mania for Gothic décor, the island and the threatening sea, all through the eyes of a chambermaid—not a fantasy maid, but the real girl from Alderney whose death in 1861 saddened the whole Hugolian establishment. The poverty, ill-health and exploitation of working folk and especially of the young girls who are brought to life here deepen the understanding of what Hugo’s great novel was really about. In this lively translation by Philip Terry, Axelrad’s portrait of a normal yet unique Victorian household seen from ‘downstairs’ is a true gem.” —David Bellos

HOW TO LEAVE THE WORLD by Marouane Bakhti, translated by Lara Vergnaud (Divided Publishing) $40
“An urgent, bleakly funny, fragmentary account of displacement, queer desire, and finding a place in the world. Using a collage technique, Bakhti has produced an outstanding novel about identity and endurance.”

Everyone is asking about his identity. Gay? Muslim? French? Moroccan? Instead of choosing a side, he writes a book. A book about the forest and the city, Paris and Tangiers, shame and forgiveness, dating apps and spiritual discovery. A book about growing up as a diaspora kid in rural France, with desires that want to emerge at any cost. Told in mesmerising prose, How to Leave the World is a beautiful non-answer.

THERE’S A MONSTER BEHIND THE DOOR by Gaëlle Bélem, translated by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert (Bullaum Press) $42
“A rollicking, sardonic picaresque set on the French outpost of La Réunion in the. 1980s. The novel has important things to say about colonialism and society, but it’s also tremendous fun — darkly funny, acerbic, energetic. There’s scarcely a dull moment on the page, and the translation is remarkably slick.”

The name Dessaintes is one to reckon with. A bombastic, violent and increasingly dangerous clan, little do they know that their downfall is being chronicled by one of their own. This is La Reunion in the 1980s: high unemployment and low expectations, the legacy of postcolonialism. One little girl makes a bid for escape from her sadistic parents' reign of terror and turns to school for salvation. Rich in the history of the island's customs and superstitions, and driven by a wild, offbeat humour, this picaresque tale manages to satirize the very notion of freedom available in this French territory, and perhaps even the act of writing itself and where it might lead you. Also listed for the 2025 International Booker Prize.
”A tour-de-force as volcanic as the little island of La Reunion, a tiny sliver of France marooned in the Indian Ocean, ‘a heap of rubble on the edge of the world’. The narrator of Gaëlle Bélem's novel, a little girl no-one wanted, the unloved daughter of the Dessaintes, is determined to be someone, to tell the story of her family, and through them the story of an island founded on slavery, poverty, cruelty and superstition with a caustic wit and a keen eye. It is a tragi-comedy worthy of Zola, candid and unflinching, yet shot through with humour and poignancy and even a glimmer of hope. Belem's novel is a joyous discovery and in Laetitia Saint-Loubert and Karen Fleetwood she has found translators alert to the nuances of French and Creole and to the poetry threaded through this startling debut.” —Frank Wynne

INVISIBLE DOGS by Charles Boyle (CB Editions) $36
“An offbeat, elegantly written tale about two authors marooned an exchange programme in an unnamed totalitarian country. The narrative voice is great company, by turns droll, plaintive and ruminative. It’s whimsical but controlled, and surprisingly compulsive for a largely plotless novel.”

Invisible Dogs is the travel diary of an English writer invited to a country in which there are no dogs – but he keeps seeing them, vanishing around corners. There are rumours of dogs gathering in the mountains, preparing for an assault on the city.
”Invisible Dogs is such a direct, lucid text that the reader might mistake it for a simple record of a visit to an authoritarian country. But Boyle’s wry and wiry prose, an invisible dog in itself, makes an eye contact you can’t break and produces thereafter a quietly deadly picture of the viewed and the viewer, the destination and the traveller.” —M. John Harrison
”Funny, sinister, thought-moving like light, subtly then increasingly terrifying. Its intelligence reads like relief. Its determination not to language- or life-launder leaves it and the experience of reading it clean and cleansing re the shining and the very dark and the strangeness of us.” —Ali Smith

MOTHER NAKED by Glen James Brown (Peninsula Press) $38
“Set in the fifteenth century and narrated by an irrepressible bard called Mother Naked, this novel is bawdy, funny and tragic. The voice of Mother Naked is entirely authentic. Both an entertaining read and a serious work of historical fiction.”

The City of Durham, 1434. Out of a storm, an aging minstrel arrives at the cathedral to entertain the city's most powerful men. Mother Naked is his name, and the story he's come to tell is the Legend of the Fell Wraith: the gruesome 'walking ghost' some say slaughtered the nearby village of Segerston forty years earlier. But is this monster only a myth, born from the dim minds of toiling peasants? Or does the Wraith - and the murders - have roots in real events suffered by those fated to a lifetime of labour? As Mother Naked weaves the strands of the mystery — of class, religion, art and ale — the chilling truth might be closer to his privileged audience than they could ever imagine. Taking its inspiration from a single payment entered into Durham's Cathedral rolls, 'Modyr Nakett' was the lowest-paid performer in over 200 years of records. Set against the traumatic shadow of the Black Death and the Peasant's Revolt, Mother Naked speaks back from the margins, in a fury of imaginative recuperation.
”Exhilarating, freewheeling, brilliantly plotted and politically scathing, Mother Naked is a tour de force of language and style, and absolutely a novel for our times.” —Preti Taneja

Find out what the judges have to say about the 16 excellent books short-listed for the four categories of this year’s book awards. Click through to our website to find out more, and to secure your copies.

We can send your books to you by overnight courier, or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

Tell us which ones are your favourites!

JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION

At the Grand Glacier Hotel by Laurence Fearnley (Penguin, Penguin Random House)
While recovering from a leg sarcoma, Libby is temporarily stranded in the Grand Glacier Hotel. At the base of the swiftly retreating Fox Glacier, she gradually rediscovers her self-confidence and mobility. This novel introduces an ordinary but spectacular world in which it’s possible to imagine that the extinct South Island kōkako yet lives. The sense of place, the fascinating cast of characters, and the investigation of human relationships linger long after the book is closed.

Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
A novel of humanity, humour and understated prose, Delirious is a luminously written and poignant exploration of aging, memory and the fraught ties of family. Retired policewoman Mary and recently retired librarian Pete decide to shift into a retirement home, but an unexpected development in the 40-year-old case of their son’s death immerses them in a journey that recasts what might have been the end as an uplifting new beginning.

Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn (Otago University Press)
What is ugly in this collection are the conflicts and secrets that drive each plot: burning wind turbines, mutated salmon and mortal hatred. In stories set in the UK and New Zealand, Kirsty Gunn’s characters confront forces that challenge their capacity to endure. Images of triumph are brought into sharp focus by a masterful wordsmith: memories of a pristine river, a herd of running deer and the shot not fired.

The Mires by Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) (Ultimo Press)
Keri and her daughter Wairere, whose psychic sensitivity allows her insight into the minds of the living and the dead, share a row of flats with a family of climate refugees and a Pākehā woman whose radicalised son returns home. Audaciously located at the leaky intersection of race, class and climate justice, The Mires navigates themes of racism and disinformation in ways that are mana enhancing and yet surprising.

MARY AND PETER BIGGS AWARD FOR POETRY

Hopurangi - Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka by Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu) (Auckland University Press)
Robert Sullivan’s collection presents a distinctive and musical poetic voice, inflected with te reo Māori. The poet is almost a tribal shaman, making observations that invoke planetary energies. In this way he offers a visionary way of seeing that connects to the natural world. In search of self transformation he invokes metamorphosis and the Māori spirit world. Māori creation myths, Treaty claims, Ovid, Dante, recent iwi histories and cradle Catholicism are all part of the rich mix.

In the Half Light of a Dying Day by C.K. Stead (Auckland University Press)
Love and grief and a breakthrough from Catullus’ familiar stance to raw emotion mark C.K. Stead’s meditation on the death of his beloved, Kezia (wife, Kay). The poems are the more moving because the Stead virtues still play their part in the telling selection of details (what to wear in a casket; the company of a cat). In this exploration of time and loss, sentimentality is banished. Everything has been changed, utterly and profoundly.

Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit by Emma Neale (Otago University Press)
This is a collection concerned with fibs and fables, and telling true stories perceived by others as tall stories. Emma Neale’s word alchemy takes everyday fustian and transforms it into something fine and precious and enduring as she strives for epiphanies, for transcendence, for truth-telling — for telling moments sifted from the quotidian flux. Fastidious attention to precise luminous detail, a vigilant ear for sound patterns, and an ironically self-aware literary consciousness are in play.

Slender Volumes by Richard von Sturmer (Spoor Books)
This substantial publication with its witty and paradoxical title is a meditative poetry journal, artfully constructed to present what amounts to a series of mirabilia: anecdotes that might arouse astonishment or wonder in a spiritual sense. Richard von Sturmer’s poems seek illumination from the ordinary everyday world. Drawing partly on Buddhist teachings, life itself is here seen as miraculous. There's a dancing intelligence at work, highly alert, self aware, and fearless.

BOOKHUB AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION

Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist by Jill Trevelyan, Jennifer Taylor and Greg Donson (Massey University Press)
A celebration of the Whanganui-born artist Edith Collier (1885–1964), this attractive publication coincided with the reopening of the Sarjeant Gallery and an exhibition of over 150 of Collier’s works. Jill Trevelyan’s substantial introductory essay and further essays by other writers and artists offer fresh insights into Collier’s life and the continuing impact of her work, illustrated with historical photographs and a generous selection of high quality reproductions of her art.

Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer by Athol McCredie (Te Papa Press)
Meet Leslie Adkin (1888-1964), a hard-working farmer and amateur photographer whose intellectual curiosity often challenged the established wisdom of New Zealand’s higher educated, scientific elite. Athol McCredie’s longstanding dedication to bringing Adkin’s story and photographs to wider public attention is clearly evident. The result is a surprisingly intimate portrait that rewards the reader with carefully curated, stunning imagery, complemented with a well-researched, accessibly-written text. Elegantly designed, the book is a pleasure to handle, browse and read.

Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa by Matiu Baker (Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Whakaue), Katie Cooper, Michael Fitzgerald and Rebecca Rice (Te Papa Press)
How do you tell stories from a bleak chapter in New Zealand’s history when your own institutional forebears had a less-than honourable role in the narrative? A curatorial team from Te Papa attempts exactly that through 500 collection objects. Complemented by longer-form essays from guest writers, this richly illustrated book is accessible to a general audience, and relevant to the Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum. It is also very topical with the current public discourse on Te Tiriti.

Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art by Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu), Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) and Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī) (Auckland University Press)
A magnum opus with an ambitious kaupapa: to establish a Maori framework for indigenous art history. The result of 12 years of research, this book is destined to become a standard New Zealand art history text that will feature on tertiary reading lists and library shelves, both in New Zealand and overseas, for years to come. Flawlessly designed and extensively illustrated, it makes excellent use of archival institutional sources.

GENERAL NON-FICTION AWARD

Bad Archive by Flora Feltham (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
These beautifully crafted and meditative essays are by turns moving, delightful and challenging. Building on each other in unexpected but always illuminating ways, taken together they present an intimate portrait of the author Flora Feltham’s life and relationships, and invite the reader to reflect on the duality of love and grief, the meaning of family and the importance of craft – with both words and textiles – in the making of meaning.

Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery by Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku (Te Arawa, Tūhoe, Ngāpuhi, Waikato) (HarperCollins Publishers Aotearoa New Zealand)
Hine Toa defies easy categorisation. It is a rich, personal, stunningly evocative and creative memoir of Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku’s life, from early childhood on ‘the pā’ at Ōhinemutu to academic achievements such as being the first wahine Māori to be awarded a PhD in New Zealand. But it is also a fiery social and political history of this country through the mid late 20th century from a vital, queer, Māori, feminist perspective that deserves – and here claims – centre stage.

The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
How would we know if we are living through a mass extinction? Are there signs in the physical archive – the fossils, stories, jewellery and perfumes humans have carried into the 21st century but perhaps failed to interpret? In this singular essay collection, Una Cruickshank unpacks the science and history of pearls, jet, amber, coral and other talismans from the biosphere to open new perspectives on climate change, humanity, and maybe hope.

The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation by Richard Shaw (Massey University Press)
Building on his earlier memoir The Forgotten Coast, Richard Shaw commits to the confronting but critical work of decolonisation, weaving his own stories and family histories with those of other Pākehā ‘settler’ descendants willing to look the trauma and intergenerational implications of colonisation in the eye. What if the benign family stories you grew up with masked something very different? An important and timely read for tangata Tiriti.

A revolving selection of excellent recent fiction and literary gems, significantly reduced in price to encourage your discovery. 

Just enter the discount code CIRCUS when adding the books to your cart for a 20% discount.

This offer is extended on these books only until 18 March 2025, and is limited to the copies currently in stock.

The long lists for the this year’s premier book awards in Aotearoa have been announced. Get your copies and start reading now. Tell us what you think!

New Zealand Book Awards Trust Te Ohu Tiaki i Te Rau Hiringa chair Nicola Legat says this year’s longlist is a testament to the talent of the authors and the farsighted publishers who back them.

“Across poetry, prose and non-fiction the list includes books by some of our finest thinkers and most inventive writers. Some tackle today’s burning issues and others are entertaining and escapist reads. All deserve our admiration.

“The 2025 longlist is one of great riches. The judges have a difficult job ahead of them to select the shortlists and eventual winners,” she says.

We can have your books dispatched by overnight courier, or ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction

• All That We Know by Shilo Kino (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Maniapoto) (Moa Press)

• Amma by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press)

• Ash by Louise Wallace (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

• At the Grand Glacier Hotel by Laurence Fearnley (Penguin, Penguin Random House)

• Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

• Kataraina by Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe, Waitaha) (Mākaro Press)

• The Mires by Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) (Ultimo Press)

• Poorhara by Michelle Rahurahu (Ngāti Rahurahu, Ngāti Tahu–Ngāti Whaoa) (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

• Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn (Otago University Press)

• The Royal Free by Carl Shuker (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry

• Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud by Lee Murray (The Cuba Press)

• The Girls in the Red House are Singing by Tracey Slaughter (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

• Hibiscus Tart by Carin Smeaton (Titus Books)

• Hopurangi - Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka by Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu) (Auckland University Press)

• In the Half Light of a Dying Day by C.K. Stead (Auckland University Press)

• Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit by Emma Neale (Otago University Press)

• Manuali ʻi by Rex Letoa Paget (Saufoʻi Press)

• /Slanted by Alison Glenny (Compound Press)

• Slender Volumes by Richard von Sturmer (Spoor Books)

• Slim Volume by James Brown (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction

• Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa by Matiu Baker (Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Whakaue), Katie Cooper, Michael Fitzgerald and Rebecca Rice (Te Papa Press)

• A Different Light: First Photographs of Aotearoa by Catherine Hammond and Shaun Higgins (Auckland University Press)

• Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist by Jill Trevelyan, Jennifer Taylor and Greg Donson (Massey University Press)

• Fenoga Tāoga Niue I Aotearoa: Niue Heritage Journey in Aotearoa by Molima Molly Pihigia, Toluma'anave Barbara Makuati-Afitu, Kolokesa Uafā Māhina-Tuai, Hikule'o Fe'aomoeako Melaia Māhina and Janson Chau (Mafola Press)

• Force of Nature Te Aumangea o Te Ao Tūroa: A Conservation History of Forest & Bird 1923-2023 by David Young and Naomi Arnold (Potton & Burton)

• Golden Enterprise: New Zealand Chinese Merchants 1860s-1970s by Phoebe H. Li (Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust)

• Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer by Athol McCredie (Te Papa Press)

• Sam the Trap Man: Cracking Yarns and Tall Tales from the Bush by Sam Gibson (Allen & Unwin New Zealand)

• Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa by Kirsty Baker (Auckland University Press)

• Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art by Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) and Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī) (Auckland University Press)

General Non-Fiction Award

• Bad Archive by Flora Feltham (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

• The Beautiful Afternoon by Airini Beautrais (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

• Becoming Aotearoa: A New History of New Zealand by Michael Belgrave (Massey University Press)

• The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

• Feijoa: A Story of Obsession & Belonging by Kate Evans (Moa Press)

• Hard by the Cloud House by Peter Walker (Massey University Press)

• Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery by Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku (Te Arawa, Tūhoe, Ngāpuhi, Waikato)(HarperCollins Publishers Aotearoa New Zealand)

• The Invasion of Waikato Te Riri ki Tainui by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books)

• Kahurangi: The Nature of Kahurangi National Park and Northwest Nelson by Dave Hansford (Potton & Burton)

• The Mermaid Chronicles: A Midlife Mer-moir by Megan Dunn (Penguin, Penguin Random House)

• The Twisted Chain by Jason Gurney (Ngāpuhi) (Otago University Press)

• Unreel: A Life in Review by Diana Wichtel (Penguin, Penguin Random House)

• The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation by Richard Shaw (Massey University Press)

The 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE has been awarded to the subtle and fearless Korean writer, HAN KANG.

“Han Kang’s intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life. Her empathy for vulnerable, often female, lives is palpable, and reinforced by her metaphorically charged prose. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.” —Nobel judges’ citation

“Han Kang is one of the greatest living writers. She is a voice for women, for truth and, above all, for the power of what literature can be.” —Eimear McBride

THE VEGETARIAN (translated by Deborah Smith)

Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams — invasive images of blood and brutality — torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It's a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that's become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.
Winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.

HUMAN ACTS (translated by Deborah Smith)

Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend's corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter censorship, denial, forgiveness and the echoing agony of the original trauma. Human Acts is a universal book, utterly modern and profoundly timeless.

THE WHITE BOOK (translated by Deborah Smith, with photographs by Choi Jinhyuk)

While on a writer's residency, a nameless narrator wanders the twin white worlds of the blank page and snowy Warsaw. The White Book becomes a meditation on the color white, as well as a fictional journey inspired by an older sister who died in her mother's arms, a few hours old. The narrator grapples with the tragedy that has haunted her family, an event she colors in stark white — breast milk, swaddling bands, the baby's rice cake-colored skin — and, from here, visits all that glows in her memory: from a white dog to sugar cubes. As the writer reckons with the enormity of her sister's death, Han Kang's trademark frank and chilling prose is softened by retrospection, introspection, and a deep sense of resilience and love. The White Book — ultimately a letter from Kang to her sister — offers powerful philosophy and personal psychology on the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.

• Read Stella’s review.

GREEK LESSONS (translated by Deborah Smith and E. Yaewon)

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight. Soon they discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it's the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages. Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish — the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to one another. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity — their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to expression.

WE DO NOT PART (translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris)

One morning in December, Kyungha receives a message from her friend Inseon saying she has been hospitalised in Seoul and asking that Kyungha join her urgently. The two women have last seen each other over a year before, on Jeju Island, where Inseon lives and where, two days before this reunion, she has injured herself chopping wood. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation, Inseon has had to leave behind her pet bird, which will quickly die unless it receives food. Bedridden, she begs Kyungha to take the first plane to Jeju to save the animal. Unfortunately, a snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon's house at all costs, but the icy wind and snow squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save Inseon's bird — or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness which awaits her at her friend's house. There, the long-buried story of Inseon's family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in the archive painstakingly assembled at the house, documenting a terrible massacre on the island of 30,000 civilians, murdered in 1948-49. We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination, and above all a powerful indictment against forgetting.

The best ways to get all your seasonal gift shopping done painlessly (pleasurably!) at VOLUME:

1. Ask our advice. We’ve had decades’ worth of experience helping all sorts of people to choose just the right book to give as a gift (or to keep for themselves). Just send us your gift-recipient list and we will send you some suggestions from our shelves (or we can arrange a Zoom consultation, if you like!). We can gift-wrap the books and dispatch them to you or to the recipients, or have them ready to collect from our door from 3 January. >>Ask our advice now.

2. Browse our website and choose. Our shelves are full of interesting, well-written and beautiful books — all selected by us for their excellence — and our shop website is arranged to help you choose just the right thing. Find the authors or titles you love with the quick-search bar — or make discoveries! Click on our website’s categories and sub-categories bring you to ‘virtual shelves’ of books of similar interest (where relevant, you will find page-views of the insides of the books, to help you choose).
   Here are a few shortcuts to some really good books:

• Fiction (for adults):
  If you are wanting a well-written, vital novel, anything on the Booker Prize short list would be ideal.
  Or choose from the Goldsmiths Prize short list for something more innovative.
  Our curated selection of Translated fiction includes the books listed for this year’s International Booker Prize.
  It has been a strong year for Aotearoa fiction!
  We have many interesting books published by Small Presses in Aotearoa and overseas.
  And we have interesting books for those who like Historical Fiction, Crime, and Speculative or Dystopian Fiction.
  And Poetry always makes a good gift!

• Books for children:
  We have excellent choices in everything from Board Books to Picture Books, to Junior Fiction, to Senior (or ‘Middle Grade’) Fiction, to Novels for Young Adults.
  Choose from our selection of children’s books from Aotearoa, or from our books in te reo Māori.
  And we have beautiful and informative books of Non-Fiction, and Graphic Novels for Children, too!

• This is the time of year in which a Cook Book, an Art Book, or a Book about Gardening would make a perfect gift!
  And we have interesting Graphic Novels, too…

• Our Culture section has books about creative and lifestyle pursuits.

• Our Society section includes books on History and Politics for those interested in how people interact — in the past or in the present. It is more important than ever to understand the history and present of Aotearoa.

• As the title suggests, our section on the Mind includes books on Philosophy and Psychology.

• And our Science section brings you fine writing and the latest information and thinking in many fields.

• We now have a Biography and Memoir section!

• For a really special gift, why not give a Volume Reading Subscription! We have a subscription menu for adults, and a subscription menu for children — but, really, we can tailor a subscription in any way to suit both the reader and the giver (just ask!).

We can gift-wrap the books* and dispatch them to you or to the recipients — or have them ready to collect from our door.
(*we do not charge for gift-wrapping)

Three ways to get all your seasonal gift shopping done painlessly (pleasurably!) at VOLUME:

1. Ask our advice. We’ve had decades’ worth of experience helping all sorts of people to choose just the right book to give as a gift (or to keep for themselves). Just send us your gift-recipient list and we will send you some suggestions from our shelves (or we can arrange a Zoom consultation, if you like!). We can gift-wrap the books and dispatch them to you or to the recipients, or have them ready to collect from our door. >>Ask our advice now.

2. Ask us for something particular. Is there a particular book that you would like to give, or that someone has requested as a gift? If we don’t have the book on our shelves already, we will tell you how long it will take to arrive and find the best option for you. >>Tell us what you are looking for.

3. Browse our website and choose. Our shelves are full of interesting, well-written and beautiful books — all selected by us for their excellence — and our shop website is arranged to help you choose just the right thing. Find the authors or titles you love with the quick-search bar — or make discoveries! Click on our website’s categories and sub-categories bring you to ‘virtual shelves’ of books of similar interest (where relevant, you will find page-views of the insides of the books, to help you choose).
   Here are a few shortcuts to some really good books:

• Fiction (for adults):
  If you are wanting a well-written, vital novel, anything on the Booker Prize short list would be ideal.
  Or choose from the Goldsmiths Prize short list for something more innovative.
  Our curated selection of Translated fiction includes the books listed for this year’s International Booker Prize.
  It has been a strong year for Aotearoa fiction!
  We have many interesting books published by Small Presses in Aotearoa and overseas.
  And we have interesting books for those who like Historical Fiction, Crime, and Speculative or Dystopian Fiction.
  And Poetry always make a good gift!

• Books for children:
  We have excellent choices in everything from Board Books to Picture Books, to Junior Fiction, to Senior (or ‘Middle Grade’) Fiction, to Novels for Young Adults.
  Choose from our selection of children’s books from Aotearoa, or from our books in te reo Māori.
  And we have beautiful and informative books of Non-Fiction, and Graphic Novels for Children, too!

• This is the time of year in which a Cook Book, an Art Book, or a Book about Gardening would make a perfect gift!
  And we have interesting Graphic Novels, too…

• Our Culture section has books about creative and lifestyle pursuits.

• Our Society section includes books on History and Politics for those interested in how people interact — in the past or in the present. It is more important than ever to understand the history and present of Aotearoa.

• As the title suggests, our section on the Mind includes books on Philosophy and Psychology.

• And our Science section brings you fine writing and the latest information and thinking in many fields.

• We now have a Biography and Memoir section!

• For a really special gift, why not give a Volume Reading Subscription! We have a subscription menu for adults, and a subscription menu for children — but, really, we can tailor a subscription in any way to suit both the reader and the giver (just ask!).

We can gift-wrap the books* and dispatch them to you or to the recipients — or have them ready to collect from our door.
(*we do not charge for gift-wrapping)

The best ways to get all your seasonal gift shopping done painlessly (pleasurably!) at VOLUME:

1. Ask our advice. We’ve had decades’ worth of experience helping all sorts of people to choose just the right book to give as a gift (or to keep for themselves). Just send us your gift-recipient list and we will send you some suggestions from our shelves (or we can arrange a Zoom consultation, if you like!). We can gift-wrap the books and dispatch them to you or to the recipients, or have them ready to collect from our door. >>Ask our advice now.

2. Browse our website and choose. Our shelves are full of interesting, well-written and beautiful books — all selected by us for their excellence — and our shop website is arranged to help you choose just the right thing. Find the authors or titles you love with the quick-search bar — or make discoveries! Click on our website’s categories and sub-categories bring you to ‘virtual shelves’ of books of similar interest (where relevant, you will find page-views of the insides of the books, to help you choose).
   Here are a few shortcuts to some really good books:

• Fiction (for adults):
  If you are wanting a well-written, vital novel, anything on the Booker Prize short list would be ideal.
  Or choose from the Goldsmiths Prize short list for something more innovative.
  Our curated selection of Translated fiction includes the books listed for this year’s International Booker Prize.
  It has been a strong year for Aotearoa fiction!
  We have many interesting books published by Small Presses in Aotearoa and overseas.
  And we have interesting books for those who like Historical Fiction, Crime, and Speculative or Dystopian Fiction.
  And Poetry always makes a good gift!

• Books for children:
  We have excellent choices in everything from Board Books to Picture Books, to Junior Fiction, to Senior (or ‘Middle Grade’) Fiction, to Novels for Young Adults.
  Choose from our selection of children’s books from Aotearoa, or from our books in te reo Māori.
  And we have beautiful and informative books of Non-Fiction, and Graphic Novels for Children, too!

• This is the time of year in which a Cook Book, an Art Book, or a Book about Gardening would make a perfect gift!
  And we have interesting Graphic Novels, too…

• Our Culture section has books about creative and lifestyle pursuits.

• Our Society section includes books on History and Politics for those interested in how people interact — in the past or in the present. It is more important than ever to understand the history and present of Aotearoa.

• As the title suggests, our section on the Mind includes books on Philosophy and Psychology.

• And our Science section brings you fine writing and the latest information and thinking in many fields.

• We now have a Biography and Memoir section!

• For a really special gift, why not give a Volume Reading Subscription! We have a subscription menu for adults, and a subscription menu for children — but, really, we can tailor a subscription in any way to suit both the reader and the giver (just ask!).

We can gift-wrap the books* and dispatch them by overnight courier to you or to the recipients — or have them ready to collect from our door.
(*we do not charge for gift-wrapping)

The GOLDSMITHS PRIZE celebrates fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form. This year, all six (excellent!) shortlisted titles “ask uncomfortable questions while nonetheless finding exuberance and joy in a form that makes such questioning both possible and pleasurable: the novel at its most novel.” —judging chair

Click through to our website to get your copies of these enjoyable and interesting books. We can dispatch to anywhere in Aotearoa by overnight courier, or have the books ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

THE WINNER

PARADE by Rachel Cusk

Midway through his life, an artist begins to paint upside down. In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. A mother dies. A man falls to his death. Couples seek escape in distant lands. The new novel from one of the most distinctive writers of the age, Parade  sets loose a carousel of lives. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot, to tell a true story — about art, family, morality, gender, and how we compose ourselves.

What the judges say: "Every sentence in Parade  seems to grapple with an idea. People die, perspective shifts, scenery changes, and yet there remains a clear, sharp line of thought that holds the reader. In effortlessly beautiful prose Cusk challenges the conventions of the novel form as well as addressing the relationship between literature and visual art, and of how each can exist alongside the ordinariness of life.  Parade is a ferociously illuminating novel that embraces the exquisite cruelty of the world at this present moment."

“Examining the life of the artist and the composition of the self, Rachel Cusk’s Parade exposes the power and limitations of our alternate selves.  Probing the limits of the novel form and pushing back against convention, this is a work that resets our understanding of what the long form makes possible.” —Abigail Shinn, Chair of Judges

"Every sentence in Parade seems to grapple with an idea. People die, perspective shifts, scenery changes, and yet there remains a clear, sharp line of thought that holds the reader. In effortlessly beautiful prose Cusk challenges the conventions of the novel form as well as addressing the relationship between literature and visual art, and of how each can exist alongside the ordinariness of life. Parade is a ferociously illuminating novel that embraces the exquisite cruelty of the world at this present moment." —Sara Baume, judge

• Read Thomas’s review.

• Find out more.

THE OTHER SHORT-LISTED BOOKS

ALL MY PRECIOUS MADNESS by Mark Bowles

All My Precious Madness is a story of a man at odds with the world. A man who wants to escape his violent past but who — most emphatically — repeats it. Henry Nash has hauled his way from a working class childhood in Bradford, through an undergraduate degree at Oxford, and into adulthood and an academic elite. But still, he can't escape his anger. As the world — and men in particular — continues to disappoint him, so does his rage grow in momentum, until it becomes almost rapturous. And lethal. A savagely funny novel that disdains moral conventions, All My Precious Madness is also a work of deep empathy — even when that empathy means understanding the darkest parts of humanity. It is, as Terry Eagleton says, “a wonderfully stylish, intelligent piece of work” — and one of the most electric debuts in recent years.

What the judges say: "Mark Bowles’s All My Precious Madness is an exhilaratingly intelligent, hilariously foul-mouthed monologue: partly a crankish rant, railing violently — and digressively — against the crushing idiocies of contemporary life, partly an affecting Bildungsroman, centred on the narrator’s relationship with their father. At once crackling with spontaneity and beautifully controlled, alternating between a curmudgeon’s uproarious disgust and a child’s poignant wonder, Bowles’s novel is a wonderful piece of writing which you will be sorry to finish."

TELL by Jonathan Buckley

Curtis Doyle, a self-made businessman and art collector, has vanished from his palatial home in the Scottish Highlands. In the wake of his disappearance, the woman who worked as his gardener is interviewed for a possible film about her employer. A work of strange and intoxicating immediacy, exploring wealth, the art world, and the intimacy and distance between social classes, Tell is a probing and complex examination of the ways in which we make stories of our own lives and of other people’s. 

What the judges say: "For the reader, it is as if we have our ear pressed against a keyhole, listening, or are flies on a wall, witnessing events that seem to portend some momentous revelation about a man.  Tell is a relentlessly truthful and absorbing tale about the human condition and a searing account of the complexity of life in the modern world. Employing the simplest of narrative devices but used in the most innovative ways, Jonathan Buckley has produced a profound work of fiction."

CHOICE by Neel Mukherjee

How have we come to live this way? At what cost? Who pays the price? A publisher, who is at war with his industry and himself, embarks on a radical experiment in his own life and the lives of those connected to him; an academic exchanges one story for another after an accident brings a stranger into her life; and a family in rural India have their lives destroyed by a gift. These three ingeniously linked but distinct narratives, each of which has devastating unintended consequences, form a breathtaking exploration of freedom, responsibility, and ethics. What happens when market values replace other notions of value and meaning? How do the choices we make affect our work, our relationships, and our place in the world? Neel Mukherjee’s novel exposes the myths of individual choice, and confronts our fundamental assumptions about economics, race, appropriation, and the tangled ethics of contemporary life. Choice  is  a scathing, compassionate quarrel with the world, a masterful inquiry into how we should live our lives, and how we should tell them. 

What the judges say: "A truly ambitious and compelling fiction from an author at the height of his powers. Choice lays out three narratives exploring 21st-century ethical and political dilemmas. The novel is not only intellectually impressive, it is also immensely moving, and shot through with heart-breaking moments."

SPENT LIGHT by Lara Pawson

A woman contemplates her hand-me-down toaster and suddenly the whole world erupts into her kitchen, in all its brutality and loveliness: global networks of resource extraction and forced labour, technologies of industrial murder, histories of genocide, alongside traditions of craft, the pleasures of convenience and dexterity, the giving and receiving of affection and care. Spent Light asks us to begin the work of de-enchanting all the crap we gather around ourselves to fend off the abyss — because we’ll never manage that anyway, the book warns, the abyss is already in us. But love is too. There might be no home to be found in objects, but there’s one to be made with other people. In the end, this powerful, startling book is a love letter.

What the judges say: "It is impossible to predict, at the beginning of almost every paragraph of Spent Light, where it will have taken the reader by the end. With a remorseless attention to detail Pawson encounters familiar objects and excavates from each a portal to the past, or to a distant corner of the world, or to the shadows of the narrator’s complex mind. Spent Light is an evisceration of solemn reality, a novel that somehow manages to balance horror, humour and incredible tenderness."

• Read Thomas’s review.

PORTRAITS AT THE PALACE OF CREATIVITY AND WRECKING by Han Smith

The almost daughter is almost normal, because she knows how to know and also not know. She knows and does not know, for instance, about the barracks by the athletics field, and about the lonely woman she visits each week. She knows — almost — about ghosts, and their ghosts, and she knows not to have questions about them. She knows to focus on being a woman: on training her body and dreaming only of escape. Then, the almost daughter meets Oksana. Oksana is not even almost normal, and the questions she has are not normal at all. Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is the story of a young woman coming of age in a town reckoning with its brutal past.  

What the judges say: "Composed as a series of portraits, some fragmentary, all multi-faceted and allusory, Smith’s novel is a hallucinatory window into what it means to excavate the past in a world committed to its erasure. At once a poignant coming of age story and an exploration of how language is shaped by ideology, Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is tender and merciless in its slanting look at the history of state violence and its unacknowledged but profound effects on individuals and communities. An important reminder that the stories we tell can serve as propaganda and as powerful works of resistance, Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking demonstrates how the novel can reflect and resist the double speak of our own time."

BUYING INTERESTING BOOKS MAKES INTERESTING BOOKS POSSIBLE

The 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE has been awarded to the subtle and fearless Korean writer, HAN KANG.

“Han Kang’s intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life. Her empathy for vulnerable, often female, lives is palpable, and reinforced by her metaphorically charged prose. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style has become an innovator in contemporary prose.” —Nobel judges’ citation

“Han Kang is one of the greatest living writers. She is a voice for women, for truth and, above all, for the power of what literature can be.” —Eimear McBride

THE VEGETARIAN (translated by Deborah Smith)

Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams — invasive images of blood and brutality — torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It's a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that's become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.
Winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.

HUMAN ACTS (translated by Deborah Smith)

Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend's corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter censorship, denial, forgiveness and the echoing agony of the original trauma. Human Acts is a universal book, utterly modern and profoundly timeless.

THE WHITE BOOK (translated by Deborah Smith, with photographs by Choi Jinhyuk)

While on a writer's residency, a nameless narrator wanders the twin white worlds of the blank page and snowy Warsaw. The White Book becomes a meditation on the color white, as well as a fictional journey inspired by an older sister who died in her mother's arms, a few hours old. The narrator grapples with the tragedy that has haunted her family, an event she colors in stark white — breast milk, swaddling bands, the baby's rice cake-colored skin — and, from here, visits all that glows in her memory: from a white dog to sugar cubes. As the writer reckons with the enormity of her sister's death, Han Kang's trademark frank and chilling prose is softened by retrospection, introspection, and a deep sense of resilience and love. The White Book — ultimately a letter from Kang to her sister — offers powerful philosophy and personal psychology on the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.

• Read Stella’s review.

GREEK LESSONS (translated by Deborah Smith and E. Yaewon)

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight. Soon they discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it's the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages. Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish — the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to one another. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity — their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to expression.

WE DO NOT PART (translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris)

One morning in December, Kyungha receives a message from her friend Inseon saying she has been hospitalized in Seoul and asking that Kyungha join her urgently. The two women have last seen each other over a year before, on Jeju Island, where Inseon lives and where, two days before this reunion, she has injured herself chopping wood. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation, Inseon has had to leave behind her pet bird, which will quickly die unless it receives food. Bedridden, she begs Kyungha to take the first plane to Jeju to save the animal. Unfortunately, a snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon's house at all costs, but the icy wind and snow squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save Inseon's bird — or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness which awaits her at her friend's house. There, the long-buried story of Inseon's family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in the archive painstakingly assembled at the house, documenting a terrible massacre on the island of 30,000 civilians, murdered in 1948-49. We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination, and above all a powerful indictment against forgetting.

Six excellent books were short-listed for the 2024 Booker Prize.

Read them all, and let us know what you think!

THE WINNER!

ORBITAL by Samantha Harvey

What the judges said: “Samantha Harvey’s compact yet beautifully expansive novel invites us to observe Earth’s splendour from the drifting perspective of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station as they navigate bereavement, loneliness and mission fatigue. Moving from the claustrophobia of their cabins to the infinitude of space, from their wide-ranging memories to their careful attention to their tasks, from searching metaphysical inquiry to the spectacle of the natural world, Orbital offers us a love letter to our planet as well as a deeply moving acknowledgement of the individual and collective value of every human life.”

JAMES by Percival Everett

What the judges said: “A masterful, revisionist work that immerses the reader in the brutality of slavery, juxtaposed with a movingly persistent humanity. Through lyrical, richly textured prose, Everett crafts a captivating response to Mark Twain’s classic, Huckleberry Finn, that is both a bold exploration of a dark chapter in history and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. With its virtuosic command of language and moral urgency, James stands as a towering achievement that confronts the past while holding out hope for a progressive future, cementing Everett’s deserved reputation as a literary sensation.

CREATION LAKE by Rachel Kushner

What the judges said: “Sadie Smith – not her real name – is an FBI agent turned spy-for-hire, whose latest mission is to infiltrate a commune of eco-activists in rural France. She’s an extraordinary creation: sharp-minded, iron-willed, accustomed to moving fast and breaking things. As she investigates the group, she hacks into emails from their guru, a shadowy eccentric who has withdrawn from modernity into the ancient caves that dot the landscape; he has some beguiling ideas about the role of Neanderthals through history. What’s so electrifying about this novel is the way it knits contemporary politics and power with a deep counter-history of human civilisation. We found the prose thrilling, the ideas exciting, the book as a whole a profound and irresistible page-turner.”

HELD by Anne Michaels

What the judges said: “The first few pages of this brief kaleidoscopic novel from the author of Fugitive Pieces may seem forbidding, yet every member of the judging panel was transported by this book. Michaels, a poet, is utterly uncompromising in her vision and execution. She is writing about war, trauma, science, faith and above all love and human connection; her canvas is a century of busy history, but she connects the fragments of her story through theme and image rather than character and chronology, intense moments surrounded by great gaps of space and time. Appropriately for a novel about consciousness, it seems to alter and expand your state of mind. Reading it is a unique experience.

THE SAFEKEEP by Yael van der Wouden

What the judges said: “Set in the early 1960s in the Netherlands in an isolated house, The Safekeep draws us into a world as carefully calibrated as a Dutch still-life. Every piece of crockery or silverware is accounted for here. Isa is the protagonist – a withdrawn figure who is safeguarding this inheritance. When her brother brings his new girlfriend Eva into this household the energy field changes as we sense boundaries of possession being crossed, other histories coming into the light. We loved this debut novel for its remarkable inhabitation of obsession. It navigates an emotional landscape of loss and return in an unforgettable way.”

STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL by Charlotte Wood

What the judges said: “Sometimes a visitor becomes a resident, and a temporary retreat becomes permanent. This happens to the narrator in Stone Yard Devotional – a woman with seemingly solid connections to the world who changes her life and settles into a monastery in rural Australia. Yet no shelter is impermeable. The past, in the form of the returning bones of an old acquaintance, comes knocking at her door; the present, in the forms of a global pandemic and a local plague of mice and rats, demands her attention. The novel thrilled and chilled the judges – it’s a book we can’t wait to put into the hands of readers.”

These wonderful books have just won their categories at the 2024 NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS.
Read what the judges had to say, and then click through to our website to grab your copies (or to get us to send them to the children or young adults of your choice). These books are selling fast, but more stock of all of them is on its way!

MARGARET MAHY BOOK OF THE YEAR

Nine Girls — Written by Stacy Gregg (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Pūkeko, Ngāti Maru Hauraki) (Published by Penguin Books)

In Nine Girls Stacy Gregg masterfully weaves comedy, fantasy and history together in a profound exploration of the complexity of identity in Aotearoa New Zealand through the experiences of a young Māori girl finding her place in the world. Historical events are woven into the fabric of the story, grounding her personal journey in a broader socio-political context. Vivid characters animate a fast-paced, eventful narrative with plot twists and emotional highs and lows.
This book celebrates Māori identity, pays tribute to Aotearoa’s rich history, and testifies to the power of storytelling. Nine Girls is a taonga for readers of all ages, resonating long after the final page is turned.

CATEGORY WINNERS

PICTURE BOOK AWARD

Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai — Written by Michaela Keeble with Kerehi Grace (Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Ngāti Porou), and illustrated by Tokerau Brown (Published by: Gecko Press)

Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai is groundbreaking, deeply creative, and completely original. The story comes from the mouth of a child, and the illustrations are a direct window to the imagination, or maybe to the reality of a child’s mind as they make sense of their identity, whānau, culture, and other big questions.
This is a sophisticated picture book that can be enjoyed by all ages. An inspirational read that will encourage our tamariki and mokopuna to tell their own stories, with their own voices, it deserves to become an Aotearoa bookshelf classic.

• Look inside!

WRIGHT FAMILY FOUNDATION ESTHER GLEN AWARD FOR JUNIOR FICTION

Nine Girls — Written by Stacy Gregg (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Pūkeko, Ngāti Maru Hauraki) (Published by: Penguin, Penguin Random House)

Using the thread of storytelling, Nine Girls weaves together an exploration of the complexity of identity, the resonance of history, and the transformative power of friendship. Comic action, magical realism, and social history are skilfully combined in this captivating coming-of-age story. Vivid and well-developed characters populate a fast-paced, eventful narrative as we follow the young protagonist’s journey to discovering her Māori identity. Te ao Pākehā and te ao Māori are equally uplifted as the text explores our bicultural history.
Poignant and profound, affirming and authentic, this book is rich with themes of identity, friendship, and cultural heritage – a taonga from a masterful storyteller.

YOUNG ADULT FICTION AWARD

Catch a Falling Star — Written by Eileen Merriman (Published by: Penguin Books)

Catch a Falling Star is a masterclass in writing that bravely tells the story of Jamie Orange, a complicated and endearing young man who struggles with mental health issues while juggling school work, relationships, and performing in the local musical.
Eileen Merriman has skilfully and sensitively captured Jamie’s journey, allowing readers to step in and experience it alongside him. The result is a remarkably authentic portrayal of his escalating problems, fraught with frenetic energy and leading to a horrifying climax. This book is significant for teens today who may relate to the issues Jamie faces, and better understand them through reading his story.

ELSIE LOCKE AWARD FOR NON-FICTION

Ultrawild: An Audacious Plan to Rewild Every City on Earth — Written and illustrated by Steve Mushin (Published by: Allen & Unwin)

In Ultrawild, Steve Mushin leads us on a deadly serious quest to design our way out of climate change. He presents out-there concepts that are ingenious, technically plausible and often humorous – but it’s the way they are communicated that gives this book the wow factor. Pages are filled to the brim with detailed illustrations of his designs, speech bubbles, arrows, calculations, and full-page spreads that show what these rewilded cities could look like. This book about futuristic design is itself an object of outstanding design.
Ultrawild encourages readers to see the explicit connection between creativity and science, and as Steve Mushin puts it, to think ludicrous thoughts and have revolutionary ideas.

• Look inside!

RUSSELL CLARK AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATION

Patu: The New Zealand Wars — Illustrated and written by Gavin Bishop (Tainui, Ngāti Awa) (Published by: Puffin Books)

In Patu: The New Zealand Wars, Gavin Bishop has brought everything in his considerable artistic arsenal to bear on this most difficult and fundamental part of our colonial history, with the ambition and control of an illustrator at the height of their mastery.
A complex and wide-ranging story is told clearly and accessibly at least as much through the illustrations as it is through the words, and most importantly it is told with power. In what is not just a historical recounting, the stark compositions and limited colour palette speak to a deeply personal tale; one of mamae discovered, mamae long felt, and mamae yet to be healed.

• Look inside!

WRIGHT FAMILY FOUNDATION TE KURA POUNAMU AWARD FOR TE REO MĀORI

Nani Jo me ngā Mokopuna Porohīanga — Written by Moira Wairama and illustrated by Margaret Tolland (Published by: Baggage Books)

Nani Jo me ngā Mokopuna Porohīanga is a beautifully written story about the special memories and bonds that are made when we are intentional in our relationships. Opening with childlike bubbly energy and using repetitive language to capture younger audiences, Nani Jo and her mokopuna guide us through the spiritual and emotional experiences of life.
This taonga uses inclusive language to convey the significance of stories, their role in helping us make sense of our world, and the importance of poroporoaki to the grieving process. It is in itself a journey of creating and sharing stories that will live on in generations to come.

N.Z.S.A. BEST FIRST BOOK AWARD

Tsunami — Written and illustrated by Ned Wenlock (Published by: Earth’s End Publishing)

As a graphic novel Tsunami is exemplary, with the language of comics intrinsic to its understanding and impact. The toy-like characters with their clean simple lines invite readers to identify with them, even as their diagrammatic performance of the story's central tragedy distances readers from them – thus seamlessly reflecting the book's themes of alienation and the need for connection.
Tsunami respects the ability of its audience to handle ambiguity, to rise to meet its challenges and to find its rewards, however unsettling the journey may be. This is a book that lingers after the reading, and seems destined to be studied and discussed for a long time to come.

• Look inside!

Some superb books have been recognised in this year’s awards, from a strong year of Aotearoa publishing. Read the judges’ comments below, and click through to our website for your copies.

JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION

Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury Publishing) $25

A searing and urgent novel crackling with tension and intelligence, Lioness starts with a hiss and ends with a roar as protagonist Therese’s dawning awareness and growing rage reveals itself. At first glance this is a psychological thriller about a privileged wealthy family and its unravelling. Look closer and it is an incisive exploration of wealth, power, class, female rage, and the search for authenticity. Emily Perkins deftly wrangles a large cast of characters in vivid technicolour, giving each their moment in the sun, while dexterously weaving together multiple plotlines. Her acute observations and razor-sharp wit decimate the tropes of mid-life in moments of pure prose brilliance, leaving the reader gasping for more. Disturbing, deep, smart, and funny as hell, Lioness is unforgettable.

• Read Stella’s review.

• Find out more about the book.

MARY AND PETER BIGGS AWARD FOR POETRY

Chinese Fish by Grace Yee (Giramondo Publishing) $30

Grace Yee’s is a striking aesthetic – it blurs genres, it dances around the page, it crosses languages by fusing Cantonese-Taishanese and English, both official and unofficial. Her craft is remarkable. She moves between old newspaper cuttings, advertisements, letters, recipes, cultural theory, and dialogue. Creating a new archival poetics for the Chinese trans-Tasman diaspora, the sequence narrates a Hong Kong family’s assimilation into New Zealand life from the 1960s to the 1980s, interrogating ideas of citizenship and national identity. It displaces the reader, evoking the unsettledness of migration. In Chinese Fish, Yee cooks up a rich variety of poetic material into a book that is special and strange; this is poetry at its urgent and thrilling best.

BOOKSELLERS AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION

Don Binney — Flight Path by Gregory O’Brien (Auckland University press) $90

Even as an experienced biographer, Gregory O’Brien has achieved a near impossible task in Don Binney: Flight Path. He has encapsulated the artist’s full life, honestly portraying his often contrary personality, and carefully interrogating a formidably large body of work and its place in Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history. O’Brien’s respect for Binney includes acknowledging that he could be both charming and curmudgeonly, and as a result he offers a complete picture of this complex and creative man. Equally compelling are the book’s faithfully reproduced artworks, exemplifying the best in design, layout and reproduction. From the cover onwards, the images of the paintings take us to the place where Binney observed the land and the birds, capturing the qualities of whenua that meant so much to him.

GENERAL NON-FICTION AWARD

An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific essays by Damon Salesa (Bridget Williams Books) $50

In An Indigenous Ocean, Toeolesulusulu Damon Salesa weaves together academic rigour, captivating stories and engaging prose to reframe our understanding of New Zealand’s colonial history in the South Pacific. This scholarly but highly accessible collection of essays carves out space for indigenous voices to tell their own narratives. Grounded in a deep understanding of Pacific history and cultures, Salesa addresses the contemporary social, political, economic, regional and international issues faced by Pacific nations. This seminal work asserts the Pacific’s ongoing impact worldwide, despite marginalisation by New Zealand and others, and will maintain its relevance for generations.

MŪRAU O TE TUHI – MĀORI LANGUAGE AWARD

Te Rautakitahi o Tūhoe ki Ōrākau by Tā Pou Temara (Ngāi Tūhoe) (Kotahi Rau Pukapuka, Auckland University Press) $40

He motuhenga marika tēnei pukapuka inā hoki ko tāu e pānui ana ko ngā kupu tuku iho a ngā tūpuna ake o te kaituhi i rongo rā i ngā kōrero a ētehi o te rautakitahi a Tūhoe i haere rā ki te tinei i te ahi ki tawhiti, koia te pakanga rongonui o Ōrākau. Hihiri ana a Hinengaro i a Tā Pou Temara e taki ana i ngā kōrero tuku iho, me te aha he mea kōrero ki te reo o Tūhoe koinei te reo i tupu ai ia. Tuituia ana e ia ōna ake whakaaro puta noa i te pukapuka kia noho mai ko tētehi pukapuka kounga nei mā te hunga e pīkoko ki te reo me te kaihītori ā-kāinga e kai ngākau ana i ngā kōrero o Ngā Riri Whenua o Aotearoa.
This book is truly unique, in that what you read are the narratives which have been handed down to the author through his grandparents, who heard the accounts from that very brave band of Te Urewera and Ngāi Tūhoe who travelled to extinguish the fires from afar at the famous Battle of Ōrākau. Tā Pou Temara enriches us with not only their stories but also a retelling of their narratives in the language of Tūhoe, the language he grew up in. He weaves his own thoughts through the book, which makes it a valuable read for both lovers of the Māori language and at-home-historians interested in the New Zealand Land Wars.

MĀTĀTUHI FUNDATION BEST FIRST BOOK AWARDS

HUBERT CHURCH PRIZE FOR FICTION

Ruin, And other stories by Emma Hislop (Te Herenga Waka University Press) $35

Each story in this powerful collection exhibits an artful control of situation, character, and language to examine the fallout of painful events which largely occur offstage. Emma Hislop’s portrayals are perceptive, providing the women in her stories the space to grapple with disquieting questions that lack easy answers, while the insistent humanity of her characterisations suggests cause for hope. There is not a spare word in these refined and compelling stories, which introduce a striking new voice to our literature.

E.H. MCCORMICK PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION

There’s a Cure for This by Emma Wehipeihana (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) (Penguin Books) $35

Emma Wehipeihana’s engaging, eloquent, witty and sometimes confronting memoir is an extremely impressive first book. It is structured as a series of powerful essays about her journey as a wahine Māori through both her early life and her time in medical school. Emerging as a doctor, she recounts with candour and wry humour the racism she and other Māori experience, and she highlights, in an infinitely readable way, the structural inequalities in the health system.

JESSIE MACKAY PRIZE FOR POETRY

At the Point of Seeing by Megan Kitching (Otago University Press) $25

At the Point of Seeing is one of the most accomplished debuts readers are likely to encounter. The collection uses structure to amplify meaning, and its luxuriant lexicon and sometimes knotty syntax are always invigorating rather than confusing. But this book is never a mere exercise in building poems mechanically. Megan Kitching’s poems are warm-blooded, compassionate, and inquiring. They take the reader into an Aotearoa landscape and a moral universe that they will want to explore over and over again.

JUDITH BINNEY PRIZE FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION

Rugby League in New Zealand: A people’s history by Ryan Bodman (Bridget Williams Books) $60

You don’t have to have seen a rugby league game, or even like sport, to be enchanted by Ryan Bodman’s debut book. This is a meticulously researched and engagingly written social history, packed full of stories about what rugby league has meant not just to the players and their supporters, but also to entire communities. The photographs – showing crowd support, action shots, smiling children, and female players – give us a fascinating insight into the story of the sport, whether on the margins or in the mainstream.

• The other short-listed books.

• The other long-listed books.

16 excellent books have been short-listed for this year’s OCKHAM NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS.

Find out what the judges have to say, and click through to secure your copies:

JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION

A Better Place by Stephen Daisley (Text Publishing) $38

The tragedies of war and prevailing social attitudes are viewed with an unflinching but contemporary eye as Stephen Daisley’s lean, agile prose depicts faceted perspectives on masculinity, fraternity, violence, art, nationhood and queer love in this story about twin brothers fighting in WW2. With its brisk and uncompromising accounts of military action, and deep sensitivity to the plights of its characters, A Better Place is by turns savage and tender, absurd and wry.

Audition by Pip Adam (Te Herenga Waka Univeristy Press) $35

Three giants hurtle through the cosmos in a spacecraft called Audition powered by the sound of their speech. If they are silent, their bodies continue to grow. Often confronting and claustrophobic, but always compelling, Audition asks what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much space and what role stories play in mediating truth. A mind-melting, brutalist novel, skillfully told in a collage of science fiction, social realism, and romantic comedy.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Te Herenga Waka University Press) $38

When Mira Bunting, the force behind guerilla gardening collective Birnam Wood, meets her match in American tech billionaire Robert Lemoine, the stage is set for a tightly plotted and richly imagined psychological thriller. Eleanor Catton’s page-turner gleams with intelligence, hitting the sweet spot between smart and accessible. And like an adrenalised blockbuster grafted on to Shakespearian rootstock, it accelerates towards an epic conclusion that leaves readers’ heads spinning.

Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury) $25

After marrying the older, wealthier Trevor, Teresa Holder has transformed herself into upper-class Therese Thorn, complete with her own homeware business. But when rumours of corruption gather around one of Trevor’s property developments, the fallout is swift, and Therese begins to reevaluate her privileged world. Emily Perkins weaves multiple plotlines and characters with impressive dexterity. Punchy, sophisticated and frequently funny, Lioness is an incisive exploration of wealth, power, class, female rage, and the search for authenticity.

MARY AND PETER BIGGS AWARD FOR POETRY

At the Point of Seeing by Megan Kitching (Otago University Press) $25

With a polymath’s ear and a photographer’s eye, Megan Kitching creates sharp, complex pictures of the landscapes and lifescapes of Aotearoa. Many of her best poems focus on unruly coastal zones as points of contact, where history is always being made and remade, but she doesn’t ignore the human domain with its ‘petty hungers or awkward flutters’. Importantly, her work insists on the fact that difficult social and political questions cannot be separated from aesthetic ones.

Chinese Fish by Grace Yee (Giramondo Publishing) $30

Grace Yee’s sequence narrates a family’s assimilation into New Zealand life from the 1960s to the 1980s with a striking aesthetic. We navigate swerves in personae, extratextuality, illustrations, Cantonese-Taishanese phrases and English translations provided on the back pages. Yee skillfully bends genres and displaces the reader, evoking the unsettledness of migration. An invigorating read with its tapestry of scenes, characters, food, and language, Chinese Fish contributes a new archival poetics to the Chinese trans-Tasman diaspora.

Root Leaf Flower Fruit by Bill Nelson (Te Herenga Waka University Press) $30

This intriguing verse novel leads us at a walking pace – sometimes tumbling and scraping – across country and suburb, and volatile seasons. There are pivots in perspective and a rich sense of deep time as we encounter nature, injury and recovery, and a settler farming legacy. Bill Nelson’s writing has a sonic quality, protean line breaks, and surprise story threads. The final section with its hint of the New Zealand gothic, is gripping.

Talia by Isla Huia (Te Āti Haunui a-Pāpārangi, Uenuku) (Dead Bird Books)

These poems buzz with energy: intellectual, linguistic, literary. Sharply conceived, engaged in conversation and debate across poetry, place, history, and language, Isla Huia’s work brings unexpected material into productive collision. English and te reo Māori meet this way, as do lines and echoes from older poets with present concerns. Huia has an inspired ear and engaged eye, and her poems’ sonic range and sense of adventure combine with a crafter’s care on the page.

BOOKSELLERS AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION

Don Binney: Flight Path by Gregory O’Brien (Auckland University Press) $90

In this wonderfully rich and honest portrait of the artist Don Binney, Gregory O’Brien is never an unquestioning cheerleader for his subject. So while readers see and appreciate his famous works and learn about his interest in both geology and royalty, they also discover his sometimes prickly and sardonic personality. Binney neither liked nor identified with the description ‘bird man’, but hear the name Don Binney and his soaring solo birds come instantly to mind.

• Look inside!

Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager’s Field Guide by Liv Sisson (Penguin Random House) $45

Liv Sisson’s fungi field guide is a joyous combination of information and advice that is totally practical, potentially lifesaving and deliciously quirky. If you don’t know a black landscaping morel from a death cap or a stinky squid from a dog vomit, look no further. Fungi might not move but they are notoriously hard to photograph, so full credit to Paula Vigus and the other photographers for making the mostly tiny subject matter look enticing, and even monumental.

• Look inside!

Marilynn Webb: Folded in the Hills by Lauren Gutsell, Lucy Hammonds and Bridget Reweti (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi) (Dunedin Public Art Gallery) $70

From its irresistibly tactile cover to the end note from the Webb estate that the humble Marilynn would have been honoured by the book, this is a magnificent publication. Creating a book from an exhibition has many fishhooks, but the writers, contributors and designer have produced a book that shines. Webb’s life story and her artistic practice are told in both te reo Māori and English, and her art is lovingly and accurately reproduced on the page.

• Look inside!

Rugby League in New Zeaqland: A People’s History by Ryan Bodman (Bridget Williams Books) $60

One of Ryan Bodman’s many achievements with this, his first book, is the fact that you don’t have to know or even be interested in rugby league to enjoy it. He presents us with a genuinely fascinating social history which includes identity, women in sport, gangs, politics and community pride in their teams. The photographs taken on and off the field are an absolute treasure-trove of a record of the sport.

GENERAL NON-FICTION AWARD

An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific Essays by Damon Salesa (Bridget Williams Books) $50

Damon Salesa’s collection of essays re-frames our understanding of Aotearoa New Zealand’s colonial history in the South Pacific. A seminal work, An Indigenous Ocean asserts Pacific agency and therefore its ongoing impact worldwide, despite marginalisation by New Zealand and others. Salesa brings together academic rigour, captivating stories and engaging prose, resulting in a masterful book that will endure for generations.

Laughing in the Dark: A Memoir by Barbara Else (Penguin Random House) $40

In this beautifully crafted memoir, Barbara Else reflects on her writing career and its impact on her life. Else’s narrative is both resolute and nuanced, artful and authentic. A story that perhaps could only be told decades after the death of her first husband, Jim Neale – the archetypal patriarchal man in the 1960s and 1970s – Else also explores how toxic masculinity took its toll on him while examining when she herself needed to be held to account.

Ngātokimatawhaorua: Biography of a Waka by Jeff Evans (Massey University Press) $50

Beginning with an expedition into the Puketi forest alongside master waka builder Rānui Maupakanga, Jeff Evans takes us on a vivid journey of discovery as he tells tell the story of the majestic waka taua Ngātokimatawhaorua, a vessel that is both a source of pride and a symbol of wayfaring prowess. Evans’ biography showcases both the whakapapa of the waka, including the influence of Te Puea Hērangi, and its role in the renaissance of voyaging and whakairo (carving) traditions.

There’s a Cure for This: A Memoir by Emma Wehipeihana (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) (Penguin Random House) $35

Engaging, eloquent and occasionally confronting, Emma Wehipeihana’s [Emma Espiner’s] memoir is comprised of a series of powerful essays about her journey as a Māori woman through both her early life and her time in medical school. Emerging as a doctor, she recounts the racism she and others experience and highlights the structural inequalities in New Zealand’s health system. This book brims with candour, pathos, and wry humour.

16 excellent books have been short-listed for this year’s OCKHAM NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS.

Find out what the judges have to say, and click through to secure your copies:

JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION

A Better Place by Stephen Daisley (Text Publishing) $38

The tragedies of war and prevailing social attitudes are viewed with an unflinching but contemporary eye as Stephen Daisley’s lean, agile prose depicts faceted perspectives on masculinity, fraternity, violence, art, nationhood and queer love in this story about twin brothers fighting in WW2. With its brisk and uncompromising accounts of military action, and deep sensitivity to the plights of its characters, A Better Place is by turns savage and tender, absurd and wry.

Audition by Pip Adam (Te Herenga Waka Univeristy Press) $35

Three giants hurtle through the cosmos in a spacecraft called Audition powered by the sound of their speech. If they are silent, their bodies continue to grow. Often confronting and claustrophobic, but always compelling, Audition asks what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much space and what role stories play in mediating truth. A mind-melting, brutalist novel, skillfully told in a collage of science fiction, social realism, and romantic comedy.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Te Herenga Waka University Press) $38

When Mira Bunting, the force behind guerilla gardening collective Birnam Wood, meets her match in American tech billionaire Robert Lemoine, the stage is set for a tightly plotted and richly imagined psychological thriller. Eleanor Catton’s page-turner gleams with intelligence, hitting the sweet spot between smart and accessible. And like an adrenalised blockbuster grafted on to Shakespearian rootstock, it accelerates towards an epic conclusion that leaves readers’ heads spinning.

Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury) $25

After marrying the older, wealthier Trevor, Teresa Holder has transformed herself into upper-class Therese Thorn, complete with her own homeware business. But when rumours of corruption gather around one of Trevor’s property developments, the fallout is swift, and Therese begins to reevaluate her privileged world. Emily Perkins weaves multiple plotlines and characters with impressive dexterity. Punchy, sophisticated and frequently funny, Lioness is an incisive exploration of wealth, power, class, female rage, and the search for authenticity.

MARY AND PETER BIGGS AWARD FOR POETRY

At the Point of Seeing by Megan Kitching (Otago University Press) $25

With a polymath’s ear and a photographer’s eye, Megan Kitching creates sharp, complex pictures of the landscapes and lifescapes of Aotearoa. Many of her best poems focus on unruly coastal zones as points of contact, where history is always being made and remade, but she doesn’t ignore the human domain with its ‘petty hungers or awkward flutters’. Importantly, her work insists on the fact that difficult social and political questions cannot be separated from aesthetic ones.

Chinese Fish by Grace Yee (Giramondo Publishing) $30

Grace Yee’s sequence narrates a family’s assimilation into New Zealand life from the 1960s to the 1980s with a striking aesthetic. We navigate swerves in personae, extratextuality, illustrations, Cantonese-Taishanese phrases and English translations provided on the back pages. Yee skillfully bends genres and displaces the reader, evoking the unsettledness of migration. An invigorating read with its tapestry of scenes, characters, food, and language, Chinese Fish contributes a new archival poetics to the Chinese trans-Tasman diaspora.

Root Leaf Flower Fruit by Bill Nelson (Te Herenga Waka University Press) $30

This intriguing verse novel leads us at a walking pace – sometimes tumbling and scraping – across country and suburb, and volatile seasons. There are pivots in perspective and a rich sense of deep time as we encounter nature, injury and recovery, and a settler farming legacy. Bill Nelson’s writing has a sonic quality, protean line breaks, and surprise story threads. The final section with its hint of the New Zealand gothic, is gripping.

Talia by Isla Huia (Te Āti Haunui a-Pāpārangi, Uenuku) (Dead Bird Books)

These poems buzz with energy: intellectual, linguistic, literary. Sharply conceived, engaged in conversation and debate across poetry, place, history, and language, Isla Huia’s work brings unexpected material into productive collision. English and te reo Māori meet this way, as do lines and echoes from older poets with present concerns. Huia has an inspired ear and engaged eye, and her poems’ sonic range and sense of adventure combine with a crafter’s care on the page.

BOOKSELLERS AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION

Don Binney: Flight Path by Gregory O’Brien (Auckland University Press) $90

In this wonderfully rich and honest portrait of the artist Don Binney, Gregory O’Brien is never an unquestioning cheerleader for his subject. So while readers see and appreciate his famous works and learn about his interest in both geology and royalty, they also discover his sometimes prickly and sardonic personality. Binney neither liked nor identified with the description ‘bird man’, but hear the name Don Binney and his soaring solo birds come instantly to mind.

• Look inside!

Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager’s Field Guide by Liv Sisson (Penguin Random House) $45

Liv Sisson’s fungi field guide is a joyous combination of information and advice that is totally practical, potentially lifesaving and deliciously quirky. If you don’t know a black landscaping morel from a death cap or a stinky squid from a dog vomit, look no further. Fungi might not move but they are notoriously hard to photograph, so full credit to Paula Vigus and the other photographers for making the mostly tiny subject matter look enticing, and even monumental.

• Look inside!

Marilynn Webb: Folded in the Hills by Lauren Gutsell, Lucy Hammonds and Bridget Reweti (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi) (Dunedin Public Art Gallery) $70

From its irresistibly tactile cover to the end note from the Webb estate that the humble Marilynn would have been honoured by the book, this is a magnificent publication. Creating a book from an exhibition has many fishhooks, but the writers, contributors and designer have produced a book that shines. Webb’s life story and her artistic practice are told in both te reo Māori and English, and her art is lovingly and accurately reproduced on the page.

• Look inside!

Rugby League in New Zeaqland: A People’s History by Ryan Bodman (Bridget Williams Books) $60

One of Ryan Bodman’s many achievements with this, his first book, is the fact that you don’t have to know or even be interested in rugby league to enjoy it. He presents us with a genuinely fascinating social history which includes identity, women in sport, gangs, politics and community pride in their teams. The photographs taken on and off the field are an absolute treasure-trove of a record of the sport.

GENERAL NON-FICTION AWARD

An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific Essays by Damon Salesa (Bridget Williams Books) $50

Damon Salesa’s collection of essays re-frames our understanding of Aotearoa New Zealand’s colonial history in the South Pacific. A seminal work, An Indigenous Ocean asserts Pacific agency and therefore its ongoing impact worldwide, despite marginalisation by New Zealand and others. Salesa brings together academic rigour, captivating stories and engaging prose, resulting in a masterful book that will endure for generations.

Laughing in the Dark: A Memoir by Barbara Else (Penguin Random House) $40

In this beautifully crafted memoir, Barbara Else reflects on her writing career and its impact on her life. Else’s narrative is both resolute and nuanced, artful and authentic. A story that perhaps could only be told decades after the death of her first husband, Jim Neale – the archetypal patriarchal man in the 1960s and 1970s – Else also explores how toxic masculinity took its toll on him while examining when she herself needed to be held to account.

Ngātokimatawhaorua: Biography of a Waka by Jeff Evans (Massey University Press) $50

Beginning with an expedition into the Puketi forest alongside master waka builder Rānui Maupakanga, Jeff Evans takes us on a vivid journey of discovery as he tells tell the story of the majestic waka taua Ngātokimatawhaorua, a vessel that is both a source of pride and a symbol of wayfaring prowess. Evans’ biography showcases both the whakapapa of the waka, including the influence of Te Puea Hērangi, and its role in the renaissance of voyaging and whakairo (carving) traditions.

There’s a Cure for This: A Memoir by Emma Wehipeihana (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) (Penguin Random House) $35

Engaging, eloquent and occasionally confronting, Emma Wehipeihana’s [Emma Espiner’s] memoir is comprised of a series of powerful essays about her journey as a Māori woman through both her early life and her time in medical school. Emerging as a doctor, she recounts the racism she and others experience and highlights the structural inequalities in New Zealand’s health system. This book brims with candour, pathos, and wry humour.

This summer, discover new art, be inspired, add to your reference shelves; get your imagination fired up for your next building project or craft pursuit; or simply enjoy the sheer pleasure of leafing through a beautiful book filled with intriguing images and ideas.
This is your opportunity to pile up a selection of superb books on art, architecture, photography, craft, and design, from both Aotearoa and overseas — all at satisfyingly reduced prices.
Judging from previous years, our advice is: be quick — there are single copies only of most titles and many of them cannot be reordered (even at full price). 
Build your art library or get someone a little inspiration for the coming year!

This summer discover new art, be inspired, and add to your reference shelves; get your imagination fired up for your next building project or craft pursuit; or simply enjoy the sheer pleasure of leafing through a beautiful book filled with intriguing images and ideas.

This is your opportunity to pile up a selection of superb books on art, architecture, photography, craft, and design, from both Aotearoa and overseas — all at satisfyingly reduced prices. Judging from previous years, our advice is: be quick — there are single copies only of most titles and many of them cannot be reordered (even at full price).

Build your art library or get someone a little inspiration for the coming year.

Use our website to choose your seasonal gifts (and books for yourself as well)!