Diana Wichtel won the non-fiction book of the year award in May with her Holocaust book Driving to Treblinka. Her partner Chris Barton writes about his own profound experiences – and life-changing revelations – when he accompanied Diana to the Nazi death camps. It was an odd place to be having a ridiculously obvious realisation about my life. … Read more
A new study by human rights activist Maire Leadbeater looks at New Zealand’s reluctance to do anything to halt the crimes against humanity in our Pacific neighbor, West Papua. A few years ago I wrote about New Zealand’s betrayal of the people of East Timor during the 24 years they suffered under brutal military rule … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson (MacMillan, $35) Number one for the third consecutive week! Auckland is really mastering the subtle art of not giving a fuck. 2 Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday (Granta, $33) “Initially, … Read more
New verse from Auckland writer CK Stead. Witchy Wellington A summer southerly sky grey the sea a beat-up and passing Grass Street I thought ‘Intolerable Lauris’ – not so much, or not just, the person but the name, the way those words seemed to belong together – good company, great fun, wordy and witty but … Read more
A new biography is being lauded as an “intimate and inspiring narrative that helps us at last understand Paul Simon”. But is that possible when there’s no sign of Art Garfunkel? Before starting Robert Hilburn’s Paul Simon: The Life, I was reading Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the 20th … Read more
Danyl Mclauchlan reads the 1977 book Bob Jones on Property, and wonders about the role it played in creating today’s distorted housing market. Sir Bob Jones has been in the news a bit recently. In February he published a column in the NBR suggesting that Waitangi Day be abolished and replaced with “Maori Gratitude Day”, in … Read more
Huzzah! We announce the winners of New Zealand’s most coveted writers residency in central Auckland. An author who wants to write a book about professional mermaids – there is such a thing, and it’s worryingly kind of huge – is the winner of the 2018 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency Award in Association with … Read more
Forensic psychiatrist Rees Tapsell tells the story of “Tama”, who killed his aunt in a psychotic episode, and was referred to a kaupapa Māori rehabilitation unit. As a Māori forensic psychiatrist, I have been responsible for the treatment and rehabilitation of Māori who suffer mental illness and have committed violent offences while mentally unwell. In … Read more
New verse by Dunedin writer Vincent O’Sullivan. Lines from way back The Senate seethes, as in an emperor’s reign. The deals are done, speeches endorse the corpse. Pussy and circuses stake out their claim. Immigrants, bankers, slip their varied hoops. Maggots exult that nature bred them white, Their slither vermicules to get it … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores in Willis St, Wellington, and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (Jonathan Cape, $35) Ondaatje’s Facebook page features a photo of himself as a young, really good-looking guy, lying on his side, wearing jeans, looking all soulful and brooding; the caption is a … Read more
“I am wary of reading any more feminist manifestos these days because they are very exhausting! Who the fuck just loves themselves all the time?”, writes Charlotte Graham-McLay, in her review of a brilliant new memoir hailed as a feminist manifesto but it isn’t, really. All I want famous women to talk about these days … Read more
Hi ho! Our new episode of Papercuts is here to give you both book goss and a pile of recommendations to get you through this wintery weather. Did we kill Philip Roth? We preview this week’s PANZ conference, Louisa & Kiran rave about Rachel Kushner’s Mars Room and we look at three excellent books about motherhood. We also … Read more
Over 80 writers entered New Zealand’s premier literary award – but only 10 have made the shortlist. We’ve sent out emails of regret to the unsuccessful applicants for the 2018 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency Award in Association with The Spinoff but right here, right now is the first time that the 10 shortlisted … Read more
Louisa Kasza reviews Rachel Kushner’s novel The Mars Room, which is hailed in this week’s New Yorker – alongside the US edition of Can You Tolerate This? by Ashleigh Young – as one of America’s best new books. A cool, Joan Didion-esque breeze of seeming indifference blows through the writing of US novelist Rachel Kushner. The … Read more
Niki Harré, professor of psychology at the University of Auckland, explains how we can make the world a better place by playing something she calls “the infinite game”. You probably know the drill: people are failing to recycle, driving their cars too much, or eating the wrong food. But changing the behaviour of other adults … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity Books stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson (MacMillan, $35) “Manson doesn’t go in for the positive thinking school of self-help. He makes a good case for struggle….He writes about the need to hone … Read more
New Zealand poet laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh marks the very fine and wonderful occasion of the birth of a daughter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford. Jacinda and Clarke and the Baby and Us: A Rondeau The baby’s here, the baby’s here! Aotearoa, New Zealand, what a year! Jacinda, our partnered … Read more
John Summers gets to grips with one of the year’s most popular books, a self-help guide to feeling good, deciding what’s really important in your life, and “banging blondes”: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. Surely weekends are the most stressful days of the week. The petty anxieties of the workday are nothing … Read more
As the deadline looms for the 2018 Surrey Hotel writers residency award, and entries continue to pour in from published authors and exciting nobodies, 2017 winner Charlotte Graham-McLay files a report on her experience at the Surrey. She danced a lot. During the school holidays, I used to throw tights and leotards and grubby, smelly … Read more
Book of the Week: Matt Vance reviews an investigation into “the freaks, maniacs and the greed-addled madmen” who obsessively collect, plunder and steal bird specimens. What is it about birds and obsessives? Birds, like no other animal, seem to bring out the freaks, maniacs and the greed-addled madmen of infinite detail. In June 2009, Edwin … Read more
He viewed Greymouth as “sub-human”, rather wished James K Baxter would STFU, and regarded the poetry of “plump and round” Bill Manhire as “promising”. A new book shares the 1968 diary of Landfall founder Charles Brasch. January 25, 1968 Jim [Baxter] talks so continuously because he is driven all the time by his need to put his … Read more
New verse by Eastbourne writer Maggie Rainey-Smith. Jogging she is young white and affiliated to a famous writing school an MA no less I’m assuming she must run at the very least so I can’t take offence when she tells me to jog on because I already know I’m invisible typing my life … Read more
The week’s best-sellers at the Unity Books stores in Willis St, Wellington, and High St, Auckland. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 New Animals by Pip Adam (Victoria University Press, $30) As winner of the Acorn Prize for fiction, at the recent 2018 Ockham New Zealand national book awards, Adam pocketed $50,000; last week, she did a grand better, … Read more
George Henderson gets to grips with the subject of New Zealand’s white, lucrative, high-fat, glutenous gold: milk. There is probably no food that tests our individual tolerance as much as milk. Personally, I can’t stand the stuff, yet I love some of its products. If you’re gluten intolerant or allergic to wheat, you just avoid that … Read more
Christchurch writer Amy Head on the setting for her new novel – Rotoroa, an island near Waiheke, where the Salvation Army ran a rehab centre for alcoholics. When I first learned about Rotoroa, an island east of Waiheke where the Salvation Army ran a rehabilitation facility between 1911 and 2005 (known early on as an … Read more
As the deadline fast approaches for entries to the 2018 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency In Association With The Spinoff Award, Wairarapa essayist and 2017 winner John Summers presents his diary of the prize – a five-night stay in Grey Lynn’s Surrey Hotel. I arrive overdressed. I got up at 5:30am, and wore my overcoat … Read more
David Harbourne travels to an unlikely destination for award-winning wines – the dry, frosty Waitaki Valley, near Kurow in North Otago. The Pasquale Winery is just east of Kurow, a small town in the Waitaki valley. Vines have been planted on a bed of silt and shingle next to the river, each row supported by … Read more
The week’s best-selling books at the Unity stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Warlight: A Novel by Michael Ondaatje (Jonathan Cape, $35) “It’s as if WG Sebald wrote a Bond novel”: ludicrous statement, The Guardian. 2 Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Little, Brown and Company, $35) “Arthur Less and Andrew Sean Greer are handsome … Read more
New verse by Oturehua writer Brian Turner. Small Town Blues To hell with the songs of birds, the buzzing of bees and the breeze breathing in the trees, there’s always someone who thinks the whole village appreciates their taste in music. Brian Turner, 2018 The Spinoff Review of Books is proudly … Read more