The Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize of the Ockham NZ Book Awards is dominated by established NZ authors.
The Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize of the Ockham NZ Book Awards is dominated by established NZ authors.
It could be read as a who's who of New Zealand literature; instead it's the long list for the country's most prestigious book awards.
Organisers says this year's Ockham NZ Book Awards' long list, announced today, is "laden with literary luminaries" with each of the four main categories featuring previous winners and nominees. It is in marked contrast to last year's selection, which saw emerging writers and those experimenting with form and structure favoured by judges.
Ten books are longlisted in each of the four awards categories - fiction, general non-fiction, illustrated non-fiction and poetry – with the shortlist to be announced on March 6 and the winners at the first event of the Auckland Writers Festival in May.
The Acorn Foundation Fiction category, accompanied by a $53,000 prize, includes the latest works by Charlotte Grimshaw, Kirsty Gunn, Lloyd Jones, Anne Kennedy, Fiona Kidman, Maurice Gee and Vincent O'Sullivan.
All are previous NZ book award winners but they face tough competition from fellow first-time nominees, Rajorshi Chakraborti, Majella Cullinane, Kate Duignan and Tina Makereti whose books have been favourably reviewed.
Of Makereti's The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, Herald book reviewer David Hill wrote, "Tina Makereti's characters move among places and people where mundane blends with marvellous; colloquial with lyrical; violent with self-sacrificial ... Makereti is able to take a moment and examine its reality, even as she turns it into something symbolic and transcending ..."
Kiran Dass described Kate Duignan's The New Ships as a "very satisfying first novel" and went on to say, "Settings and characters are fully realised, rich in sensory and physical detail. Duignan brilliantly captures, for example, boardroom behaviour in the legal world."
Writing in the NZ Listener, reviewer Catherine Robertson summed up The Man Who Would Not See, Rajorshi Chakraborti's fifth novel, as "… an absorbing, gripping read that is ultimately about the importance of family and the emotional labour required to create deep, honest connections."
Photographer Jane Ussher receives two nominations in the Illustrated Non-fiction category, one for The New Zealand Horse by Deborah Coddington and the other for her work on Nigel Watson's Hillary's Antarctica: Adventure, Exploration and Establishing Scott Base.
NZ Book Awards Trust chairwoman Nicola Legat says the awards, which started in 1968 as the Wattie Book Awards, signal an encouraging situation for the country's literature with a large number of entries received from a mix of established and emerging writers.
The 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlisted titles are:
Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize: The Man Who Would Not See by Rajorshi Chakraborti The Life of De'Ath by Majella Cullinane The New Ships by Kate Duignan Mazarine by Charlotte Grimshaw Caroline's Bikini by Kirsty Gunn The Cage by Lloyd Jones The Ice Shelf by Anne Kennedy This Mortal Boy by Fiona Kidman The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke by Tina Makereti All This by Chance by Vincent O'Sullivan
The covers of the Royal Society Te Aparangi Award General Non-fiction books long listed for this year's Ockham NZ Book Awards.
The Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General Non-Fiction:
Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand Wars on Screen
