Born 1970 · New Zealand
NZ Book Awards 2026 · Shortlist
The Book of Guilt
Catherine Chidgey · 55 when first published
Novel · 400 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:In an alternative England in 1979, three teenage brothers are the only boys left in a government home in the New Forest, swallowing daily medicine against an illness, while in Exeter a girl called Nancy is never let out of the house.
NZ Book Awards 2023 · Winner
The Axeman’s Carnival
Catherine Chidgey · 52 when first published
Novel · 352 pages · Family, Nature
AI-generated summary:On a struggling high-country farm, Marnie rescues a magpie chick; Tama learns to talk, grows famous, and becomes the one she tells about the violence of her husband Rob, a farmer and champion axeman.
NZ Book Awards 2021 · Shortlist
Remote Sympathy
Catherine Chidgey · 50 when first published
Novel · 528 pages · Historical, War
AI-generated summary:Greta Hahn moves from Munich into a lovely house beside Buchenwald, where her SS husband runs the camp's administration; when she falls ill, a prisoner who once invented a machine meant to cure cancer is brought to treat her.
NZ Book Awards 2017 · Winner
The Wish Child
Catherine Chidgey · 46 when first published
Novel · 384 pages · Historical, War
AI-generated summary:In 1939 two German children watch their parents give themselves to the Nazi state: Sieglinde in a comfortable Berlin home, daughter of a censor of books, and Erich, an only child who keeps bees in the countryside outside Leipzig.
NZ Book Awards 2000 · Shortlist
Golden Deeds
Catherine Chidgey · 30 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Family, Crime
AI-generated summary:A New Zealand student who has just left home starts receiving letters about Patrick Mercer, an Englishman in a coma after a car crash, while the couple she babysits for still grieve a daughter who vanished years ago.