Press Release – Ockham Book Awards
The shortlist for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, released today, is a dazzling reflection of the robust, innovative literature scene of Aotearoa New Zealand, revealing a deeper engagement with our culturally diverse society.
In the Fiction category, two past winners are vying for the same award. Catherine Chidgey and Pip Adam are both contenders for the $57,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, alongside Brannavan Gnanalingam, a previous nominee, and the critically acclaimed story writer Airini Beautrais.
The works on the Fiction shortlist explore the range of human experience, from the ‘wilful blindness’ of Nazi-occupied Germany demonstrated in
A collection of “unhappy love stories”, 10 years in the making is in contention for New Zealand’s top fiction prize – though its author says she has already had her happy ever after. Bug Week & Other Stories, the debut short-story collection by writer and poet Airini Beautrais, is one of four works shortlisted in the fiction category at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Beautrais told the Guardian that she was pleased to have made the.
Funkhaus by
Magnolia 木蘭 by
National Anthem by
The Savage Coloniser Book by
Tusiata Avia (Victoria University Press)
An Exquisite Legacy: The Life and Work of New Zealand Naturalist GV Hudson by
George Gibbs (Potton & Burton)
Monique Fiso (Godwit, Penguin Random House)
Marti Friedlander: Portraits of the Artists by
Leonard Bell (Auckland University Press)
Nature – Stilled by
Specimen: Personal Essays by
Te Hāhi Mihinare |The Māori Anglican Church by
Hirini Kaa (Bridget Williams Books)
The Dark is Light Enough: Ralph Hotere A Biographical Portrait by
Vincent O’Sullivan (Penguin, Penguin Random House)
This Pākehā Life: An Unsettled Memoir by
Sodden Downstream, is in the running again with his new novel,
Sprigs.
Bug Week & Other Stories. Fiction category convenor of judges Kiran Dass said the qualities the four shortlisted works had in common were “craft, nuance, urgent storytelling, rage against injustice, and new perspectives”.
Ross Giblin/Stuff Set in Nazi Germany,
Remote Sympathy explores the attractions and evils of obliviousness.
Nothing to See explores life in the era of surveillance capitalism and the increasingly thin line between reality and simulation.
Sprigs takes on violence, racism and toxic masculinity in the context of an all-boys’ school, while
Bug Week’s stories touch on subjects including male entitlement and death.