Reviews of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards finalists

The finalists in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards have now been announced, giving readers 16 fine books to take a second look at, and consider among the best New Zealand books ever produced. The judges had an unenviable task, with 18 months worth of submissions considered, and of course they haven’t chosen everybody’s favourite books (wherefore no The Chimes?) , but it is a pretty fine list nonetheless.

Click the title you are interested in below to read a review, either on our blog, or if we haven’t yet had it reviewed, in another extremely reputable place.

Acorn Foundation Literary Award (Fiction) 

Image from Unity Books Wellington @unitybookswgtn

The Back of His Head, by Patrick Evans (Victoria University Press)
Chappy, by Patricia Grace (Penguin Random House)
Coming Rain, by Stephen Daisley (Text Publishing)
The Invisible Mile, by David Coventry (Victoria University Press)

Poetry
How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes, by Chris Tse (Auckland University Press)
The Night We Ate the Baby, by Tim Upperton (Haunui Press)
Song of the Ghost in the Machine, by Roger Horrocks (Victoria University Press)
The Conch Trumpet, by David Eggleton (Otago University Press)

General Non-Fiction

Image from Unity Books Wellington @unitybookswgtn

Maurice Gee: Life and Work, by Rachel Barrowman (Victoria University Press)
The Villa at the Edge of the Empire: One Hundred Ways to Read a City, by Fiona Farrell (Penguin Random House)
Māori Boy: A Memoir of Childhood, by Witi Ihimaera (Penguin Random House)
Lost and Gone Away, by Lynn Jenner (Auckland University Press)

Illustrated Non-Fiction
Te Ara Puoro: A Journey into the World of Māori Music, by Richard Nunns (Potton and Burton)
New Zealand Photography Collected, by Athol McCredie (Te Papa Press)
Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History, by Atholl Anderson, Judith Binney, Aroha Harris (Bridget Williams Books)
Real Modern: Everyday New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s, by Bronwyn Labrum (Te Papa Press)

Enjoy these wonderful New Zealand books and share them far and wide.

The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are supported by the Ockham Foundation, the Acorn Foundation, Creative New Zealand and Book Tokens Ltd. You can find out who the judges are here. The winners (including of the four Best First Book Awards) will be announced at a ceremony on Tuesday May 10 2016, held as the opening night event of the Auckland Writers Festival.

The awards ceremony is open to the public for the first time. Tickets to the event can be purchased via Ticketmaster once festival bookings open on Friday 18 March. Winners of the Acorn Foundation Literary Award, for fiction, win $50,000. Winners of the other three category awards each receive $10,000, the Māori Language award $10,000, and each of the winners of the three Best First Book awards, $2,500.

by Sarah Forster, Web Editor

Book Review: The Meeting Place. Māori and Pākehā Encounters 1642-1840

There are many academic reviews of The Meeting Place and I feel confident that both high school and university students will become familiar with this text.  Is this, though, a useful text for the home?  I felt that my education skipped over a lot of early New Zealand history, and that it was law school where I finally began to understand our early history.  This book really helped me to gain a good insight into early New Zealand history, and subsequently a better understanding of how race relations in the twentieth century played out.

The book examines the interactions between Māori and Pākehā from the earliest of contact through to sophisticated, systematised encounters.  The author, Vincent O’Malley, outlines these encounters chronologically, starting from the earliest contact (and the greatest examples of culture clash/ misunderstandings) through to regular engagement around 1814, right up to the ‘tipping point’ when one culture dominated.  The years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the presence of the British Government and regular settlement in New Zealand by the British meant that the European settlers were able to be more self-reliant.  No longer needing Māori for trade, or being able to resolve matters through British law rather than negotiation meant that the cultures separated.  Pākehā culture rapidly dominated – by 1858 there were more Pākehā residents than Māori in New Zealand. Maori adopted many aspects of Pākehā culture; Pākehā no longer felt the need to engage with Māori and previous efforts in understanding and applying Māori culture waned.

If you are reading this book for fun I suggest skipping the introduction.  It took me two goes to read through and appreciate the introduction – I was concerned the whole book would be as academic and dry.  Instead, there were parts of the book, particularly the very earliest encounters, that I read almost as though it was a thriller – I was keen to learn what would happen next!  Stories where Māori were treated as possessions or slaves really got to me, and explanations of some early cultural misunderstandings were appreciated. The book’s strength for me lies in these explanations, as attempts by the author to obtain sources from both cultures helps to provide context to the encounters.  Concepts around gift-giving are discussed in the early part of the book. At this time (1770’s) Māori gift-giving required the gift to be returned to an equal or greater amount as a way of preserving the mana of the recipient.  It was not necessary, however, that this take place straight away.  Early encounters of trade/ gift giving were well placed to create confusion – gifts Captain Cook and his crew gave Māori (with no expectation of reciprocity) saw gifts being made the following day.  Equally, giving Māori an item and then indicating what was desired in trade was not well received.

Why should the average home own this book?  The Meeting Place really helps to explain the environment, events and tensions in bi-cultural Aotearoa / New Zealand.  This is our story.  The stories told and context provided is one of the more balanced and nuanced explanations of our early history.

Reviewed by Emma Wong-Ming

The Meeting Place: Māori and Pākehā Encounters 1642-1840
by Vincent O’Malley
Published by Auckland University Press
ISBN 97818694059 6