Our literary luminaries: NZ Post Book Award finalists out

The Bright Side of my Condition by Charlotte Randall, tells the story of four escaped Norfolk Island convicts.

Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel among NZ Post Book Awards finalists.

Man Booker Prize winner Eleanor Catton is among the finalists in the 2014 New Zealand Post Book Awards.

The authors, selected from 150 entries, have captured the essence of the country's psyche, according to the awards' panel of five judges.

Catton's novel The Luminaries is a finalist in the fiction category and Lloyd Jones' A History of Silence made the shortlist in the general non-fiction category. New Zealand Listener writer Rebecca Macfie's Tragedy at Pike River Mine was also named a finalist in the general non-fiction category.

Fiction finalists are Anne Kennedy's romance The Last Days of the National Costume, The Bright Side of my Condition by Charlotte Randall, which tells the story of four escaped Norfolk Island convicts, and Damien Wilkins' Max Gate - on the death of Thomas Hardy.

Four poetry finalists include two first-time authors - Caoilinn Hughes for Gathering Evidence and Marty Smith with Horse with Hat.

Judges of this year's annual awards are artist Dick Frizzell, Radio New Zealand presenter Kim Hill, poet and novelist Elizabeth Smither, literary critic Peter Simpson and broadcaster Miriama Kamo. Kamo said the judges congratulated all the finalists on their achievements in being named on the awards' shortlist.

The overall winner of the New Zealand Post Book of the Year award, announced on August 27, will receive $15,000.

Last year's winner was The Big Music by Kirsty Gunn.

Entries are now open for the people's choice category. Readers can vote on the awards' website, or in bookstores.

On the web
booksellers.co.nz/awards

nzherald.co.nz
Read the latest on literature at tinyurl.com/heraldbooks