Bestsellers Around the World: New Zealand

I have an infrequent feature that I call Bestsellers around the World, where I take a look at what the current bestsellers in a specific country. Given that I have just spent a week on the South Island of New Zealand, it seemed like a good opportunity to look at what is selling there at the moment!

Here's the list:

Kāwai by Monty Soutar

Eddy, Eddy by Kate De Goldi

Kāwai by Monty Soutar (hardback)

Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly

The Doctor’s Wife by Fiona Sussman

The Wrong Woman by J.P. Pomare

Poor People With Money by Dominic Hoey

Auē by Becky Manawatu

Nightshades and Paperwhites by Sophie Rogers

 
Harbouring by Jenny Pattrick

The first thing that caught my attention was that the same book is on the list twice! I am not sure that I have seen that before. It is common to see an author with more than one book on the list but not the same book. My attention was therefore piqued and it turns out that Kāwai is a book that I would like to read! Listen to this for a description.

This is a story of a period in NZ history that has never been told . . . It’s 1980 and a young Māori man is compelled to return to his marae on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand to learn about his family history. What follows is a fascinating insight into life in Aotearoa before the white man arrived as the young man’s elderly grand-uncle recounts the story of their ancestor, the fearsome warrior chief Kaitanga.

We first encounter Kaitanga’s father Tāwae as he awakens on a battlefield in 1734 AD, buried under a pile of corpses. Miraculously, he escapes being slain, dismembered and eaten by his enemies, though his father and uncles are not so fortunate. It is this battle that defines the future for a people whose need for retribution to assuage their grief infects multiple generations to follow.

The young chief Tāwae returns to a broken tribe, and it is his job to rebuild the strength and the fighting spirit of his people. We follow their first-born son Kaitanga as he trains hard to become one of the most incredible warriors in Māori history.

Kāwai: For Such a Time as This is not just a story of family and tribal warfare, it is also a story of love, of friendship, of a proud and resilient people who have developed a sophisticated way of living in harmony with the Gods and with the land.

Eddy, Eddy does sound interesting too! This is a novel set in post earthquake Christchurch and according to the blurb it loosely follows the plot from A Christmas Carol. One of the reviews on Goodreads also compares it to Still Life by Sarah Winman.

Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly is a debut novel set in Auckland. The title characters are brother and sister navigating the world together. It sounds really good! And interestingly, this book has also been compared to Still Life in a Goodreads review. Has that book become the book to compare too now?

The Doctor's Wife by Fiona Sussman is a crime novel by a South African born but now New Zealand author. The Wrong Woman is another crime novel, written by J P Pomare who is originally from New Zealand but now lives in Australia.

Poor People with Money by Dominic Hoey sounds grim so I am not sure it is for me.

I was already aware of the book Auē by Becky Manawatu. I first heard of it when I attended a digital session of Melbourne Writers Festival back in 2020. At the time, the book was already a year old so it is possibly a bit surprising to see it still on the bestsellers list

If there is one book on this list that I would love to read it is Nightshades and Paperwhite which is set in the New Zealand Gold Rush! Or is it Harbouring by Jenny Pattrick who writes historical fiction set in the early days of colonisation in New Zealand? Actually I would like to read both of these books. 

Have you heard of any of these books?

Sunday Salon: Melbourne Writers Festival: Digital - week 1

A few weeks ago I shared a list of just some of the authors that I have seen over the years at Melbourne Writers Festival. This weekend this year's festival has commenced, albeit in a fully digital version, so I am getting the opportunity to add to that list.

Over the years, my coverage of MWF events has ranged from a very detailed summary of every session that I attended to not even mentioning that I went! This year, my aim is to end up somewhere in the middle of that scale.

Like so many other events around the world, there was no choice but to move this festival into the digital realm. One of the interesting aspects of this festival is that we could choose to pay what we like for sessions. There were multiple options ranging from free to $50 per session.

When I looked at the program for this year, I selected a number of sessions, but none of them were this weekend. It really was only as the daily email came out that I realised that there were actually a couple of sessions I wanted to attend. I am not sure why it was that I didn't notice them when I initially looked at the program.

The first session that I watched was Australian indigenous author Tara June Winch, author of the Miles Franklin winning book The Yield, interviewing Ngāi Tahu author and journalist Becky Manawatu, about her book Auē. This book won one of the biggest prizes in New Zealand, the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.

This conversation was incredibly interesting to me from the aspect of how much these two indigenous authors had in common. Neither of them was a formally trained writer when they started writing their prize books, they both live outside their country while in the process of writing very Australian and New Zealand books, and they shared similar feelings about being successful with stories that are their own, but are also so much the stories of their peoples and the burden that brings.

There was a lot of conversation about the legacy of colonisation, about the role of "curdled masculinity" in the ongoing violence in Maori society, how writing a painful story helps with personal pain, the need for mentoring and support of indigenous writers and so much more. It was thought provoking session.

Today I attended a session with Singaporean author Jing-Jing Lee whose book How We Disappeared was long listed for both the Women's Fiction Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The book tells the story of the Singaporean women who were forced to become comfort women for the Japanese army after the invade the city during WWII.

I have long been fascinated by the story of how seemingly impregnable Singapore fell, so this book is one that I am drawn to straight away. In addition, this is a dual timeline story as we follow Wang Di, the main character, during her life in WWII and also in the early 2000s where she lives life as a "cardboard woman", a hoarder who makes a living selling recycled cardboard. There is also a third perspective which was interesting as it provided the author a break from the intense story that she was telling, and also assists in showing what Singapore is like today.

One of the interesting things that tied both of these sessions together was the idea of shame and the role it plays in our lives. For the comfort women, it was taboo to talk about their experiences, and it forever shaped their lives.

I definitely want to read this book.

I also listened to the podcast of the opening session which featured well known Australian author Kate Grenville talking about the stories we tell ourselves, particularly in times like those that we are experiencing right now. This is also available on podcast so I think that anyone can listen to it, so if you are interested check it out here.

During the week, I am intending a session featuring former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and then I have a full weekend next weekend, so expect to hear more about MWF Digital!

I am sharing this post with Sunday Salon, which is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz