An award winning book took the most quintessential of New Zealand subjects - sheep - and united it with one of the very highest of literary themes: the meaning and nature of death.
Ellie Catton judged Hamilton student Emily Hunter's story, Of Dust, a clear winner in the young writer category in this year's BNZ Literary Awards held in Wellington, not least because it dared to "... wrestle with a philosophical uncertainty and left that uncertainty unresolved".
The story was selected from an impressive and competitive list of 261 entries - a record and up 81 per cent on last year.
"I was reminded of the ending of Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party," Catton says of the winning story.
"The ending of Of Dust is similarly open-ended, ineffable and similarly wry."