All prizes New Zealand
New Zealand · Since 1996 · For books in English or Māori
Awarded each May at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards (until 2009 the Montana, then the New Zealand Post Book Awards) to a novel or short-story collection by a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident, written in English or te reo Māori.
New Zealand's national book awards go back to the Wattie Book Awards, first given in 1968, and the New Zealand Book Awards, set up in 1976. The two merged in 1996 as the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. New Zealand Post became the sponsor in 2010, and since 2016 they have been the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, run by the New Zealand Book Awards Trust; no awards were given in 2015. The fiction prize, now the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, is open to novels and short-story collections published the year before. A panel of three judges names a longlist, then a shortlist, now of four books, and the winner at a ceremony in May during the Auckland Writers Festival. From 2000 to 2009 the judges also named fiction runners-up. The winner received NZ$65,000 in 2026, the largest cash prize for a book in New Zealand.
NZ Book Awards 2026 · Winner
All Her Lives
Ingrid Horrocks · 50 when first published
Short stories · 272 pages · Politics, Family
AI-generated summary:Linked stories follow women from 1795 to now: girls growing up in Truby King's garden, a queer student at a Berlin rave, a mother paying for her son's climate protest, with Mary Wollstonecraft in the background.
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 2026 · Shortlist
Hoods Landing
Novel · 264 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:On the rural edge of Auckland, four generations of women gather for Christmas and a birthday, and Rita, at fifty the youngest daughter, has still not told anyone about her cancer diagnosis.
NZ Book Awards 2026 · Shortlist
How to Paint a Nude
Novel · Autofiction, Politics
AI-generated summary:In Christchurch before the earthquakes, a local artist and a painter who has fled Belarus meet at a café every Tuesday and, over a year, trade stories about art, love, oppression and the poisoning of rivers.
NZ Book Awards 2025 · Winner
Delirious
Damien Wilkins · 61 when first published
Novel · 312 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:A retired policewoman and her husband, a former librarian, are selling the family home for a place in a retirement village when a detective rings with fresh news about the accident that killed their son forty years ago.
NZ Book Awards 2025 · Shortlist
Pretty Ugly
Kirsty Gunn · 64 when first published
Short stories
AI-generated summary:Thirteen stories set in New Zealand and Britain follow people pressed to the limit of what they can endure, driven by secrets, jealousy and hatred, among burning wind turbines and mutated salmon.
NZ Book Awards 2025 · Shortlist
At the Grand Glacier Hotel
Laurence Fearnley · 61 when first published
Novel · 288 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:Recovering from cancer, Libby returns with her husband to a grand old hotel at the foot of Fox Glacier on New Zealand's West Coast, but a storm separates them and leaves her alone among its odd staff and guests.
NZ Book Awards 2025 · Shortlist
The Mires
Tina Makereti · 51 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Speculative, Politics
AI-generated summary:In a seaside town in near-future New Zealand, a single mother and her gifted teenage daughter live beside refugees who have fled climate collapse in Europe and an older Pākehā neighbour whose son comes home radicalised.
NZ Book Awards 2024 · Winner
Lioness
Emily Perkins · 53 when first published
Novel · 278 pages · Satire, Family
AI-generated summary:Teresa Holder from the Hutt Valley has become Therese Thorne, wife of a rich Wellington property developer and owner of a homeware chain, until fraud allegations around one of his developments shake her privileged life.
NZ Book Awards 2024 · Shortlist
Birnam Wood
Eleanor Catton · 38 when first published
Novel · 424 pages · Crime, Politics, Nature
AI-generated summary:When a landslide cuts off a South Island town and leaves a farm empty, a guerrilla gardening collective led by Mira Bunting sees its chance, but an American billionaire has his own plans for the land.
NZ Book Awards 2024 · Shortlist
Audition
Pip Adam · 53 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:Three giants, Alba, Stanley and Drew, are crammed into a spaceship racing towards a black hole: as long as they keep talking the ship moves, and when they fall silent their bodies start to grow again.
NZ Book Awards 2024 · Shortlist
A Better Place
Stephen Daisley · 68 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · War, Historical, Love
AI-generated summary:Roy Mitchell comes home to New Zealand from the Second World War a changed man and builds a hut above a creek; his twin brother Tony was killed on Crete in 1941.
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 2023 · Shortlist
Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant
Novel · 326 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1866 a sailing ship carrying miners and their gold from Melbourne to London is wrecked on the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands; a handful of men and one woman, Mrs Jewell, make it ashore.
NZ Book Awards 2023 · Shortlist
Better the Blood
Michael Bennett · 58 when first published
Novel · Crime · Hana Westerman, book 1
AI-generated summary:Auckland detective Hana Westerman, a Māori single mother, follows a mysterious video to a man hanged in a hidden room, and finds the killing linked to the execution of a Māori chief by British soldiers in 1863.
NZ Book Awards 2023 · Shortlist
Kāwai: For Such a Time as This
Monty Soutar · 61 when first published
Novel · 376 pages · Historical, War · Kāwai, book 1
AI-generated summary:A young Māori man goes home to the marae of his people on the North Island's east coast to hear an old grand-uncle tell the story of their ancestor Kaitanga, a warrior in mid-eighteenth-century Aotearoa.
NZ Book Awards 2022 · Winner
Kurangaituku
Whiti Hereaka · 43 when first published
Novel · 350 pages
AI-generated summary:The bird-woman Kurangaituku, the monster of the Māori story of Hatupatu, gives her own account, beginning with the birdsong that brought her to life and the coming of people, then her time with Hatupatu.
NZ Book Awards 2022 · Shortlist
Entanglement
Novel · 268 pages · Speculative, Family
AI-generated summary:Guilty for running when bullies left his twin brother brain-damaged, a writer is caught across three times: a Sydney residency in 2011, a New Zealand lake retreat in 2019, and a time traveller's return to Baltimore in 1977.
NZ Book Awards 2022 · Shortlist
A Good Winter
Gigi Fenster · 57 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:When her friend Lara takes in her grieving daughter and the new baby, Olga helps out wherever she can, but behind her sensible kindness lies a jealous wish to come first in Lara's life.
NZ Book Awards 2022 · Shortlist
Greta & Valdin
Rebecca K Reilly · 30 when first published
Novel · 352 pages · Love, Family
AI-generated summary:A brother and sister share an Auckland flat and a sprawling Māori-Russian-Catalonian family; he still loves his ex, who has moved to Buenos Aires, and she has a hopeless crush on a fellow English tutor.
NZ Book Awards 2021 · Winner
Bug Week
Airini Beautrais · 38 when first published
Short stories · 184 pages
AI-generated summary:Stories that range from 1960s Wellington to a Germany just out of Communism, voiced by or about a young child, a jilted lover, a jealous sibling, an ageing madam and an albatross who takes the stage before an audience.
NZ Book Awards 2021 · Shortlist
Sprigs
Brannavan Gnanalingam · 37 when first published
Novel
AI-generated summary:One Saturday fifteen-year-old Priya watches two boys' schools fight for the college rugby title; that night, at the team's party, her friends drift away and she is left on her own.
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 2021 · Shortlist
Nothing to See
Pip Adam · 50 when first published
Novel · Speculative
AI-generated summary:In 1994 Peggy and Greta, two recovering alcoholics who seem to share a single identity, are learning to stay sober: going to meetings, sorting donated clothes and living on almost nothing.
NZ Book Awards 2020 · Winner
Auē
Becky Manawatu · 37 when first published
Novel · 328 pages · Family, Crime
AI-generated summary:After gang violence kills their father and drives their mother into hiding, Taukiri leaves Ārama, his brother of eight, with an aunt and a hot-tempered uncle in rural Kaikōura and tries to get by alone in the city.
NZ Book Awards 2020 · Shortlist
A Mistake
Carl Shuker · 45 when first published
Novel
AI-generated summary:Elizabeth Taylor, a gifted, driven surgeon in a male-dominated Wellington hospital, operates on a critically ill young woman, and the operation goes badly wrong.
NZ Book Awards 2020 · Shortlist
Halibut on the Moon
David Vann · 53 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Jim, in middle age and in the grip of depression, leaves Alaska for California, where his brother Gary means to keep an eye on him while he visits the children he is estranged from, sees his remote mother and father, and goes to therapy.
NZ Book Awards 2020 · Shortlist
Pearly Gates
Owen Marshall · 78 when first published
Novel · 288 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:Pat 'Pearly' Gates, a former Otago rugby player who owns a successful property agency, is in his second term as mayor of a small town in the South Island and weighs whether to stand again.
NZ Book Awards 2019 · Winner
This Mortal Boy
Fiona Kidman · 78 when first published
Novel · 304 pages · Historical, Crime
AI-generated summary:In 1955 Albert 'Paddy' Black, a twenty-year-old who has come to New Zealand from Belfast, waits in an Auckland cell to stand trial after a youth is killed during a brawl in a milk bar.
NZ Book Awards 2019 · Shortlist
The New Ships
Kate Duignan · 44 when first published
Novel · Family
AI-generated summary:In Wellington soon after 9/11, the newly widowed Peter Collie looks back over his life, to something troubling that happened on a houseboat in 1970s Amsterdam and to the start of his life with Moira, a weekend painter who kept things hidden.
NZ Book Awards 2019 · Shortlist
The Cage
Lloyd Jones · 63 when first published
Novel · 272 pages
AI-generated summary:Two men arrive at the hotel of a little rural town, unable to say who they are or what disaster they have escaped, and the townspeople set out to watch them.
NZ Book Awards 2019 · Shortlist
All This by Chance
Vincent O'Sullivan · 81 when first published
Novel · Family, Historical, War
AI-generated summary:At a London church dance in 1947, a shy young New Zealand pharmacist meets Eva, raised as English and unaware of the Jewish family that sent her away to safety; they emigrate, but the past comes with them.
NZ Book Awards 2018 · Winner
The New Animals
Pip Adam · 47 when first published
Novel
AI-generated summary:In Auckland's fashion world, three weary Generation X veterans, Carla, Sharon and Duey, meet three moneyed millennials, Tommy, Cal and Kurt, who are set on remaking the industry.
NZ Book Awards 2018 · Shortlist
Baby
Annaleese Jochems · 23 when first published
Novel · Love
AI-generated summary:Bored at twenty-one, Cynthia runs off with Anahera, her fitness instructor, who is ready to leave her job and husband; taking a dog and cash that isn't theirs, they buy an old boat in the Bay of Islands.
NZ Book Awards 2018 · Shortlist
Sodden Downstream
Brannavan Gnanalingam · 34 when first published
Novel · Migration
AI-generated summary:As a supposedly rare great storm shuts Wellington's roads and trains, Sita, a Tamil refugee from Sri Lanka living in the Hutt Valley, must still get to her evening shift cleaning offices downtown or lose her contract.
NZ Book Awards 2018 · Shortlist
Salt Picnic
Novel · Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1956 Iola arrives on Ibiza, at the edge of Franco's Spain, carrying hardly more than a phrasebook, and meets an elusive American photographer who questions her about a German doctor.
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 2017 · Shortlist
The Name on the Door is Not Mine
C.K. Stead · 84 when first published
Short stories · 304 pages
AI-generated summary:Twelve stories from six decades, set from Paris and Zagreb to Sydney and Auckland, many following New Zealand writers and academics abroad through love affairs, literary rivalries and questions of reputation.
NZ Book Awards 2017 · Shortlist
Billy Bird
Emma Neale · 47 when first published
Novel · 336 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Liam and Iris, unable to have a second child, take in Jason, who becomes like a brother to their bright young son Billy; after a terrible accident, Billy comes to believe he has turned into a bird.
NZ Book Awards 2017 · Shortlist
Love as a Stranger
Owen Marshall · 75 when first published
Novel · 304 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Staying in Auckland while her husband has cancer treatment, Sarah meets a stranger, Hartley, at an 1886 grave in the Symonds Street Cemetery, and their friendship soon becomes an affair.
NZ Book Awards 2016 · Winner
Coming Rain
Stephen Daisley · 60 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Love, Nature
AI-generated summary:In the wheatbelt of Western Australia in the 1950s, a young shearer who has worked beside an older, hard-drinking mate since boyhood falls for the daughter of the farmer whose sheep they have come to shear.
NZ Book Awards 2016 · Shortlist
The Invisible Mile
David Coventry · 46 when first published
Novel · Historical, War
AI-generated summary:In 1928 a young New Zealander rides the Tour de France with the first English-speaking team ever to enter it, and as the race nears the battlefields of the north, his mind turns to the war and his family's past.
NZ Book Awards 2016 · Shortlist
Chappy
Patricia Grace · 78 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Family, Love, Historical
AI-generated summary:Sent from Europe to New Zealand to sort himself out, a troubled young man listens to his Māori grandmother and great-uncle tell the story of his Japanese grandfather, a stowaway who joined their family before the Second World War.
NZ Book Awards 2016 · Shortlist
The Back of His Head
Novel · Satire
AI-generated summary:Seven years after the death of New Zealand's Nobel-winning novelist, the four trustees who run his house as a museum face falling visitor numbers, a pushy biographer and the secrets of their own ties to the great man.
NZ Book Awards 2014 · Winner
The Luminaries
Eleanor Catton · 28 when first published
Novel · 834 pages · Historical, Crime
AI-generated summary:In 1866 Walter Moody arrives on the New Zealand goldfields to make his fortune and stumbles on a secret meeting of twelve local men who have gathered to discuss a string of unsolved crimes.
Also: Booker 2013 winner
NZ Book Awards 2014 · Shortlist
The Last Days of the National Costume
Anne Kennedy · 54 when first published
Novel · 400 pages · Love, Family
AI-generated summary:During Auckland's long power blackout of 1998, a young woman who has given up literary studies to mend clothes takes in an Irish dancing dress, and the story behind it begins to unfold.
NZ Book Awards 2014 · Shortlist
The Bright Side of My Condition
Novel · 248 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In the early nineteenth century four convicts who have escaped the Norfolk Island penal colony are put ashore on the remote Snares Islands with a few provisions, by a captain who promises to return for them within a year.
NZ Book Awards 2014 · Shortlist
Max Gate
Damien Wilkins · 50 when first published
Novel · 216 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1928 Thomas Hardy lies dying at his Dorset house while a housemaid watches his famous literary friends and local supporters fight over who knew him best and what will become of his remains.
NZ Book Awards 2013 · Winner
The Big Music
Kirsty Gunn · 52 when first published
Novel · 471 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In the hills of the Scottish Highlands a man from a long line of pipers is dying, and in his last days he works on a pipe tune meant to define his life, while his family's tangled past gathers around him.
NZ Book Awards 2013 · Shortlist
In the Absence of Heroes
Anthony McCarten · 51 when first published
Novel · 389 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:A year after their younger son's death from cancer, a couple drift apart: the wife confides in an online counsellor she has never met, their surviving son vanishes into a fantasy game, and the father logs on to find him.
NZ Book Awards 2013 · Shortlist
The Forrests
Emily Perkins · 42 when first published
Novel · 336 pages · Family, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:At seven, Dorothy Forrest moves with her odd, unsettled family from New York to Auckland, and the novel follows her through her whole life, from childhood to old age.
NZ Book Awards 2013 · Shortlist
The Intentions Book
Gigi Fenster · 48 when first published
Novel · Family
AI-generated summary:A semi-retired metadata analyst who cannot cry, and who talks in his head with his late wife, learns that his daughter is missing in the bush as bad weather sets in.
NZ Book Awards 2012 · Winner
Rangatira
Paula Morris · 46 when first published
Novel · 304 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In Auckland in 1886 an elderly Ngāti Wai chief sits for his portrait by a Bohemian painter and recalls the journey he made to England twenty years earlier with a party of northern chiefs.
NZ Book Awards 2012 · Shortlist
The Trouble with Fire
Fiona Kidman · 71 when first published
Short stories · 304 pages
AI-generated summary:Eleven long stories, set from colonial times to the present day, in which the past catches up with their mostly female characters through love, grief and loss.
NZ Book Awards 2012 · Shortlist
From Under the Overcoat
Sue Orr · 49 when first published
Short stories · 348 pages
AI-generated summary:Ten stories of present-day New Zealanders, each one drawing on a classic short story, a fairy tale or Māori myth.
NZ Book Awards 2011 · Winner
The Hut Builder
Laurence Fearnley · 47 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Nature, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In the early 1940s a boy from a small South Island town is driven over the hills into the snowy Mackenzie Country, and the sight wakes a love of mountains and words that shapes his life as a butcher and poet.
NZ Book Awards 2011 · Shortlist
The Night Book
Charlotte Grimshaw · 42 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Politics, Family
AI-generated summary:On the eve of a New Zealand election, a wealthy Auckland obstetrician drawn into politics forms a bond with the wife of the man likely to become Prime Minister, a woman hiding secrets of her own.
NZ Book Awards 2011 · Shortlist
Their Faces Were Shining
Novel · Speculative, Satire, Family
AI-generated summary:Days after a woman saves a child from drowning at her local mall, her daughter phones in tears: classmates have floated up through the roof, and the Rapture seems to have begun on an ordinary Monday.
NZ Book Awards 2010 · Winner
As the Earth Turns Silver
Alison Wong · 49 when first published
Novel · 278 pages · Historical, Love, Migration
AI-generated summary:In early twentieth-century Wellington, a Chinese greengrocer in a country that does not want him and a widow struggling to raise her children alone begin a secret love affair.
NZ Book Awards 2010 · Shortlist
Limestone
Fiona Farrell · 62 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:A New Zealand art historian in her late forties travels to a conference in Ireland, meaning also to find the Irish father who went out for cigarettes when she was a child and never came back.
NZ Book Awards 2010 · Shortlist
Living as a Moon
Owen Marshall · 68 when first published
Short stories · 304 pages
AI-generated summary:Twenty-five stories about people whose sense of self is shaped by others: a celebrity impersonator, a widow facing life alone, a man whose life turns on a chance meeting with a killer, a husband driven into telephone sex work.
NZ Book Awards 2009 · Winner
Novel About My Wife
Emily Perkins · 38 when first published
Novel · Family
AI-generated summary:A struggling screenwriter recalls his wife, who, near forty and pregnant with their first child in a run-down house in Hackney they can barely afford, becomes convinced that a homeless man is following her.
NZ Book Awards 2009 · Shortlist
Acid Song
Bernard Beckett · 41 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:Over two days around a New Zealand election, a burglary, a dispute over a schoolyard fight, a psychologist's unpopular stand and a skinhead riot all lead back to a biology lecturer with a secret.
NZ Book Awards 2009 · Shortlist
The Crocus Hour
Novel · 304 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:On Crete in the early 1980s, an unnamed narrator falls in with Henry, a New Zealander searching for his daughter, who vanished while travelling on the island with a friend.
NZ Book Awards 2009 · Shortlist
The Rehearsal
Eleanor Catton · 23 when first published
Novel · 316 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:A music teacher's affair with a pupil shakes a high school; the girls in her class and her younger sister begin to sense their own power, while first-year drama students decide to stage the scandal.
NZ Book Awards 2009 · Shortlist
The 10pm Question
Kate De Goldi · 49 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Coming of age, Family
AI-generated summary:Twelve-year-old Frankie Parsons worries about everything, from smoke alarms to imagined cancers, and each night at ten he brings his fears to his mother, the one person who listens, though she is the cause of the question he dares not ask.
NZ Book Awards 2008 · Winner
Opportunity
Charlotte Grimshaw · 39 when first published
Short stories · 288 pages
AI-generated summary:A man faces death after an operation, a devout Christian meets the man who once hurt her, a secretary learns her boss's secret, and an old Auckland woman writes a last book of her crimes, in stories whose lives turn out to be linked.
NZ Book Awards 2008 · Shortlist
Luminous
Short stories · 164 pages
AI-generated summary:Stories about people living through addiction, abandonment, loyalty and questions of who they are, where the darkest events are lit by flashes of quiet beauty and hope.
NZ Book Awards 2008 · Shortlist
Edwin and Matilda
Laurence Fearnley · 44 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:In the far south of New Zealand's South Island, a sixty-two-year-old photographer, Edwin, and twenty-two-year-old Matilda form a bond that grows in ways neither of them could have foreseen.
NZ Book Awards 2008 · Shortlist
The Blue
Mary McCallum · 46 when first published
Novel · 282 pages · Historical, Family
AI-generated summary:On an isolated island at the mouth of New Zealand's Tory Channel in 1938, a whaler's wife hiding an old grief watches the men set out for the three-month whaling season, the year her troubled elder son comes home.
NZ Book Awards 2007 · Winner
Mister Pip
Lloyd Jones · 51 when first published
Novel · Coming of age, War
AI-generated summary:On the island of Bougainville in 1991, as civil war closes in and the teachers have fled, the only white man left reopens the village school and reads Great Expectations aloud to thirteen-year-old Matilda and her classmates.
Also: Booker 2007 shortlist
NZ Book Awards 2007 · Shortlist
My Name Was Judas
C.K. Stead · 74 when first published
Novel · Historical
AI-generated summary:Some forty years after the death of Jesus, an old Judas tells the story as he remembers it: a boyhood friendship with Jesus, their schooling and families, and the journeys that brought them up against Rome and the Temple.
NZ Book Awards 2007 · Shortlist
The Fainter
Damien Wilkins · 43 when first published
Novel · 340 pages
AI-generated summary:Luke, a young New Zealand diplomat in New York preparing for the United Nations' fiftieth anniversary, witnesses a crime; as his fainting spells return, he ends up back home on his sister's farm.
NZ Book Awards 2007 · Shortlist
Ocean Roads
James George · 44 when first published
Novel · War, Family
AI-generated summary:Three generations of one family carry the damage of war, from the first atomic detonations and Nagasaki to Vietnam, in a story that moves from New Mexico's desert and Auckland's west coast beaches to Vietnam and Antarctica.
NZ Book Awards 2007 · Shortlist
The Cowboy Dog
Nigel Cox · 55 when first published
Novel · 204 pages
AI-generated summary:Raised in Auckland as 'Mr Dog' after his father was shot down when he was twelve, eighteen-year-old Chester Farlowe rides back to the cattle country of New Zealand's Volcanic Plateau to take revenge on the killer.
NZ Book Awards 2006 · Winner
Blindsight
Maurice Gee · 74 when first published
Novel · 192 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Alice Ferry, a retired Wellington scientist, is visited by a young man who says he is the grandson of her brother Gordon, now a silent derelict on the city's streets, and who wants to meet him.
NZ Book Awards 2006 · Shortlist
Dreamhunter
Elizabeth Knox · 46 when first published
Novel · 448 pages · Speculative, Coming of age · Dreamhunter Duet, book 1
AI-generated summary:In Southland, an alternative Edwardian New Zealand, a gifted few can enter the Place, where dreams are caught to be sold; teenage Laura Hame, daughter of the most famous dreamhunter, and her cousin Rose come of age to try.
NZ Book Awards 2006 · Shortlist
The Captive Wife
Fiona Kidman · 65 when first published
Novel · 368 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:After their ship is wrecked off Taranaki in 1834, Betty Guard, the young wife of an ex-convict whaler, is taken captive with her children by local Māori; back in Sydney, her months among the tribe become the subject of scandal.
NZ Book Awards 2006 · Shortlist
Responsibility
Nigel Cox · 55 when first published
Novel · 192 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Martin Rumsfield, a New Zealand museums expert in present-day Berlin who feels boxed in by work and family, is tempted when a shady figure from his past turns up with a sure-fire scheme to cheat the cheats.
NZ Book Awards 2006 · Shortlist
Watch of Gryphons and Other Stories
Owen Marshall · 64 when first published
Short stories · 316 pages
AI-generated summary:Stories of New Zealanders at home and abroad, among them a student recovering from a breakdown on a North Otago farm, a young man paid to mind an old man with dementia, and an engineer in Perugia befriending his Italian neighbours.
NZ Book Awards 2005 · Winner
Tu
Patricia Grace · 67 when first published
Novel · 288 pages · War, Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:Back from fighting with the Māori Battalion in Italy, a reclusive veteran decides to let his niece and nephew read the journal he kept in the war, when they come asking about his two older brothers.
NZ Book Awards 2005 · Shortlist
Mansfield
C.K. Stead · 72 when first published
Novel · 246 pages · Historical, War
AI-generated summary:During the First World War, a short-story writer from New Zealand moves restlessly between London and France, caught up with her partner, a French lover and a brother come to fight, while she looks for a new way to write.
NZ Book Awards 2005 · Shortlist
What Happen Then, Mr Bones?
Novel · 283 pages · Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:Running backwards from Petone in 2002 to Oxford in the 1650s, the story follows generation after generation of one family, whose lives all trace back to a woman who survived her own hanging.
NZ Book Awards 2005 · Shortlist
Book Book
Fiona Farrell · 57 when first published
Novel · 368 pages · Autofiction, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:As war is fought in the Middle East, a New Zealand woman loses herself in ancient eyewitness accounts of a Persian war, and looks back on a life shaped by the books she has read since an Otago childhood.
NZ Book Awards 2005 · Shortlist
Tarzan Presley
Nigel Cox · 53 when first published
Novel · 463 pages
AI-generated summary:A boy who grows up among gorillas in the bush of New Zealand's Wairarapa in the 1930s is discovered, brought to America to be raised as a Presley, and becomes a rock 'n' roll star.
NZ Book Awards 2004 · Winner
Slow Water
Annamarie Jagose · 38 when first published
Novel · 340 pages · Historical, Love
AI-generated summary:In 1836 an English clergyman sails from London for the missions of northern New Zealand, and during the long voyage he is drawn into a love affair that will put him in danger.
Also: Miles Franklin 2004 shortlist
NZ Book Awards 2004 · Shortlist
The Sea Between Us
Elizabeth Smither · 62 when first published
Novel · 279 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Three sisters from a large Tasmanian family go into domestic service in Melbourne while a fourth stays at home, and their lives and their children's play out on both sides of the Tasman Sea.
NZ Book Awards 2004 · Shortlist
Hummingbird
James George · 41 when first published
Novel · 343 pages
AI-generated summary:Three strangers, a former prostitute back from Sydney, a man just out of prison and an old war veteran, wash up at a shabby campsite next to Northland's Ninety Mile Beach.
NZ Book Awards 2004 · Shortlist
The Scornful Moon
Maurice Gee · 72 when first published
Novel · 223 pages · Politics, Historical
AI-generated summary:In Wellington in 1935, a retired political journalist watches his stern brother-in-law, a former cabinet minister, decide to fight for his party's nomination at the coming election.
NZ Book Awards 2004 · Shortlist
Iridescence
Peter Wells · 53 when first published
Novel · 463 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1871 a remittance man washes up in the rough frontier town of Napier, New Zealand, having fled a London scandal linked to an actor and a famous indecency trial.
NZ Book Awards 2003 · Winner
The Shag Incident
Stephanie Johnson · 41 when first published
Novel · 295 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:In the mid-1980s a group of Auckland women take revenge on a former All Black and bestselling author they believe to be a rapist, and years later the act still binds together lives that seem unconnected.
NZ Book Awards 2003 · Shortlist
The Hopeful Traveller
Fiona Farrell · 55 when first published
Novel · Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1851 a party of English idealists founds a utopian colony on a small island off New Zealand; in 2001 six friends spend a night on the same island to mark a fiftieth birthday.
NZ Book Awards 2003 · Shortlist
When Gravity Snaps
Owen Marshall · 61 when first published
Short stories · 213 pages
AI-generated summary:Twenty-four stories, among them a tour party travelling through southern Europe, two brothers meeting again after many years when one of them is dying, and a love that goes unanswered after a tender start.
NZ Book Awards 2002 · Winner
Stonedogs
Craig Marriner · 27 when first published
Novel · 376 pages · Crime, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In Rotorua a gang of young delinquents who call themselves the Brotherhood live on drug deals, drink and fights, until an attack on one of them sends the group out on the highway for revenge.
NZ Book Awards 2002 · Shortlist
Billie's Kiss
Elizabeth Knox · 43 when first published
Novel · 319 pages · Historical, Crime, Love
AI-generated summary:In 1903 a ship blows up as it comes into harbour at a remote Scottish island, and a young survivor who leapt ashore moments before the blast falls under suspicion when she refuses to say why.
NZ Book Awards 2002 · Shortlist
Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance
Lloyd Jones · 47 when first published
Novel · 271 pages · Love, War
AI-generated summary:In a New Zealand restaurant a young dishwasher learns the tango from the owner, who tells him how her grandfather, hiding from the First World War draft in a coastal cave, taught a young woman to dance.
NZ Book Awards 2001 · Winner
The Book of Fame
Lloyd Jones · 45 when first published
Novel · 178 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In August 1905 a team of young, unknown rugby players sails from New Zealand for Britain, and over a long tour that also takes in France and America they become famous as the All Blacks.
NZ Book Awards 2001 · Shortlist
The Curative
Novel · 264 pages · Historical, Crime
AI-generated summary:In early nineteenth-century London a witty, apparently sane inmate of Bedlam, chained to the asylum wall, reflects on freedom and lost love as his past slowly shows how he came to be there.
NZ Book Awards 2001 · Shortlist
Nineteen Widows Under Ash
Damien Wilkins · 37 when first published
Novel · 318 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:A woman who has walked out on her marriage takes her teenage daughter on a long drive across America, back to the wet Pacific Northwest town she grew up in, just as the nearby volcano begins to rumble.
NZ Book Awards 2001 · Shortlist
Room
Laurence Fearnley · 37 when first published
Novel · 214 pages
AI-generated summary:Amelia Walsh, a detached doctor at a Christchurch abortion clinic watched by protesters, is shaken when a fifteen-year-old Russian patient fails to turn up for her appointment in the days before Christmas.
NZ Book Awards 2001 · Shortlist
Belief
Stephanie Johnson · 39 when first published
Novel · 485 pages · Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:Around 1900, after a whiskey-fuelled vision on a failing farm in the New Zealand bush, a hard-drinking settler leaves his young wife and newborn twins to search for God in America.
NZ Book Awards 2000 · Winner
Harlequin Rex
Owen Marshall · 58 when first published
Novel · 299 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:In a near-future New Zealand hit by Harlequin, an incurable epidemic that strips away inhibitions, David Stallman arrives at a remote sanatorium near Havelock to nurse the sufferers.
NZ Book Awards 2000 · Shortlist
Talking About O'Dwyer
C.K. Stead · 67 when first published
Novel · 219 pages · War, Historical
AI-generated summary:After the funeral of Donovan O'Dwyer, a fellow New Zealander long settled in Oxford, the philosopher Mike Newall tells a friend the secret behind a Māori curse laid on O'Dwyer after a soldier's death on Crete.
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.
NZ Book Awards 2000 · Shortlist
Classical Music
Joy Cowley · 63 when first published
Novel · 215 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:When their father dies, Delia, an interior decorator in New York, must fly home to New Zealand for the funeral and face her younger sister Bea, who stayed behind to look after their parents.
NZ Book Awards 2000 · Shortlist
Across the Dreaming Night
Judith White · 52 when first published
Novel · 288 pages
AI-generated summary:After an accident leaves Quentin Stanley damaged in mind and body, Matt, a troubled young man, rescues the baby girl from the scene and secretly keeps her, deceiving everyone around him.