Article: What to read in 2023: Non-fiction from Aotearoa New Zealand
Who knew Te Papa has a collection of 1600 badges – from Girl Guide to protest pins and everything in between?
This has piqued the interest of curators Stephanie Gibson and Claire Regnault – both winners of Ockham awards for previous books – enough to produce Tiny Statements: A Social History of Aotearoa in Badges which comes out in April.
It’s potentially one of Aotearoa’s quirkier non-fiction books due out in 2023. There’s certainly no shortage of others. We’ve long done non-fiction well, especially books which focus on our natural history and environment, and the range of subjects authors are diving into continues to grow. So much so that judges of the General Non-Fiction category at this year’s Ockham NZ Book Awards were invited to increase from 10 to 14 the number of titles they could add to the longlist.
The awards already splits non-fiction into General and Illustrated. Could it be that it’s time for a third category – especially with the growth of creative non-fiction memoir and biographies? Speaking of which, the first half of the year sees Penguin bringing out much-lauded writer Barbara Else’s memoir Laughing at the Dark and Joanna Drayton’s The Queen’s Wife while Text Publishing releases Sam Neill’s Did I Ever Tell You This?
“The brave compelling story of an elite mountaineer, who ended up a tetraplegic after a catastrophic accident” is the tagline for Not Set in Stone: The passion and consequence of a mountain life by Dave Vass (Potton & Burton) should be a compelling read. Likewise, Hayley Holt’s “raw and honest” story of alcoholism and recovery – along the way Holt has also been diagnosed with ADHD and lived through the devastating stillbirth of her first child – told in Second Chances: Facing my demons and finding a better me (HarperCollins).
Alie Benge’s Ithaca (Te Herenga Waka Press), a collection of 19 stories also looks intriguing: “From returning to Ethiopia to find it wasn’t as her memory had left it, to the Australian Army and Bible school, and culminating in an 800-kilometre trek through the Camino, Alie Benge writes of searching and longing for a sense of place – whatever that may be.”
So, too, does Southern Celts (Mary Egan Publishing) by Celine Kearney where she drew on her own family experience to travel around Aotearoa interviewing New Zealanders with Scottish and Irish heritages. It’s come out of a PhD so here’s hoping it’s not too academic but the range of subjects – from the late Keri Hulme through to Michael Fraser Milne, owner/director of Whisky Galore – is promising.
Katherine Mansfield’s Europe by Redmer Yska (Otago University Press) is out in June, marking the centennial of Mansfield’s death. Yska has traced Mansfield’s travels around Europe visiting and photographing the villas, pensions, spas, railway stations, town and cities known to Mansfield.
In October, Massey University Press publishes Rewi Thompson Architect by Jade Kake and Jeremy Hansen. It’s described as a major tribute to the late architect “whose early death robbed Aotearoa New Zealand of one of its greatest thinkers about how our built landscape could best express Te Ao Māori and be transformative.”
That book is one of several art and architecture books from MUP in 2023. Pip Adam, Sophie Jerram and Mark Amery – the dynamos behind Letting Space, which takes contemporary art outside of gallery spaces – have produced Urgent Moments: The Letting Space Projects (out in October) to highlight the role visual artists can play in “creating dynamic spaces for the public to engage in difficult but necessary conversations.”
Look out for, in November, Artists and Antarctica: Creativity in Frozen Land where Patrick Shepherd celebrates the works and words of the 32 NZ writers, artists and composers who have visited the continent with Antarctic New Zealand’s arts programme. Herbst, by John Walsh, which looks at the legacy of Herbst Architects who specialised in mostly wooden buildings is also released by MUP in November.
But its biggest seller could well come in April when The South Island from the Road by Robin Morrison is re-printed and re-released as a new edition. Morrison’s original Kodachrome slides have been digitised using the latest technology and his friend, fellow journalist Louise Callan, has written a new essay on the book and its impressive legacy. Morrison and his family spent seven months on the road in the South Island in 1979 and the resulting book was published in 1981. It sold out quickly and hasn’t been re-printed – until now – meaning copies sell for hundreds of dollars in the used book market.
The contribution of female photographers is often overlooked. Through Shaded Glass: Women and Photography in Aotearoa New Zealand (1860 – 1960) aims to change that by “unearthing a large and hitherto unknown number of women photographers, professional and amateur…” As it needs to be, it’s a sumptuous looking book where Te Papa’s curator of historical photography Lissa Mitchell has pulled together images, ground-breaking research and individual stories.
Te Papa Press also releases Ngā Kaihanga Uku: The Māori Ceramic Art Movement, described as the first comprehensive overview of Māori claywork, its origins, loss and revival, and a new edition of Tatau: Samoan Tattoo, New Zealand Art, Global Culture which includes new photographs and essays.
Auckland University Press releases posthumously Francis Pound’s Gordon Walters, a “proper” monograph about the famed NZ modernist and, also in September, Don Binney: Flight Path by Gregory O’Brien. It is the first major book on Binney, described as “one of New Zealand’s most important (and highest priced and most accessible) 20th century artists.”
That our writers are focusing more on individuals and specific places, events and communities can be seen in the selection of 2023 history books. Most likely to catch the attention of general readers is Andrew Paul Wood’s Shadow Worlds: A History of the Occult and Esoteric in New Zealand (MUP, July): “It’s hard to imagine the notion that daily life in New Zealand was narrow, conservative, unimaginative and stolid given the vigorous strand of interest in the occult, the spooky and the mysterious that has been part of our history since 1840… It’s a fresh and novel take on the history of a small colonial society that was not quite as ploddingly conformist as we may have imagined.”
More than 50 years on, the mystery of who killed Jeanette and Harvey Crewe at their Pukekawa farmhouse and who then fed their baby daughter has never been resolved. While it has led to trials – and questions about our justice system – a Royal Commission of Inquiry, a pardon for accused Arthur Allan Thomas, a feature film, documentaries, books and thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, there has never been a social history of the saga. In The Crewe Murders: A Social History (MUP, November) journalists Kirsty Johnson and James Hollings aim to reset the balance and tell the story as, “a sweeping drama and nuanced social history, combining gripping narrative with detailed research.”
Wellington got its own biography late last year (Empire City: Wellington Becomes the Capital of New Zealand by John E Martin, Te Herenga Waka University Press); now it’s Auckland’s turn. Auckland: The Twentieth Century Story by Paul Moon (Oratia Books, April) draws on a range of material to look at housing, gardening, the harbours, tangata whenua struggles, shopping culture, immigrant experiences and the “pervading sense that Auckland was simultaneously at the edge of the world yet at its centre.”
For those who are missing a weighty national history, Michael Belgrave brings out A History of Us: Aotearoa New Zealand from before the Treaty to the 2020s (MUP, November). It’s the first general history since Michael King’s blockbuster The Penguin History of New Zealand in 2003 and takes as its starting point the idea there is an NZ exceptionalism that arises from its peoples – tangata whenua and subsequent migrants: “… it considers how the past is always more complicated than the politics of the present would allow.”
Out later this month, Guyon Espiner’s The Drinking Game: How big business, the media and politicians shape the way you drink could prove to be an eye-opening exposé of one of the taken-for-granted aspects of our culture. Four years ago, Espiner quit drinking after being a heavy, but controlled, drinker since his teens. That’s given him a new perspective on our relationship with alcohol – our most harmful, yet legal, drug.
History-meets-science in books like Alison Balance’s Takahē: Bird of Dreams (Potton & Burton, April) where she charts the history of the Takahē Recovery Programme – possibly the world’s longest-running conservation programme, definitely the longest in Aotearoa – and looks at the bird’s biology and lifestyle.
Night Owls and Early Birds: A Journey through Biological Time (AUP, May) is by chronobiologist Philippa Gander who’s an emeritus professor at Massey University and the inaugural director of its Sleep/Wake Research Centre. Her book, described as popular science/health for non-specialists, considers how the rotations of earth and moon shape human biology especially through days and nights, waking and sleeping.
Those who love the sea and care about our oceans will want to get their hands on Kennedy Warne’s Soundings: Diving for Stories in the beckoning sea (MUP, June). It’s a collection of essays through which Warne connects his intensely personal experiences with a global story of our relationship with the sea. He’s spent 20 years traveling and exploring the secrets of our oceans for National Geographic so is well placed to do so.
There’s history, science and a good helping of economics/marketing in Sure to Rise: The Edmonds Story by Peter Alsop, Kate Parsonson and Ricard Wolfe (Canterbury University Press, May). It’s the story of a man who “rose from humble beginnings” and launched one of the country’s most iconic businesses and brands. So, social history meets culinary history.
Of things culinary, Beatnik release Kelly Gibney’s next cookbook, Share, in October. Allen & Unwin has young Auckland baker Petra Galler celebrating her Jewish heritage in Butter, Butter: Sometimes More is More, Winter Warmers: Recipes and stories from a New Zealand high country station by Philippa Cameron and The Everyday Herbalist: The essential guide to growing & using herbs in Aotearoa by Jane Wrigglesworth out in April.
Bateman Books Food for Thought: A New Zealand-grown Cookbook from BearLion Kitchen (April) from the Christchurch-founded, Tasman-based organic outfit led by Alesha Bilbrough-Collins and, markedly different sounding, Who Ate All the Pies? The Ultimate Collection of Pastry Treats for Every Kiwi Household (June) and a new cookbook by best-selling author Christall Lowe, Māmā Kai – Simple Kai which is released in October, just in time for Christmas when more local food books will inevitably appear. (Lowe’s debut book, Kai, is the only food title to make the longlist in the Illustrated Non-Fiction category at this year’s Ockham Awards.)
Watch Bateman Books for hunting and fishing titles, too. Hog, Dogs and a Rifle by Kim Swann is out in July followed, in August, by Louise Maich’s Finding Frank: The Life of Frank Erceg – Deer hunter, mountaineer, photographer and Fishing the Tongariro – A history of our greatest trout river by Grant Henderson.
So far, not so many political biographies – perhaps, after the welter of these in the last couple of years, there’s a pause. But there is non-fiction about our politics. This includes two books looking at the rise of right-wing radicalism and extremism in Aotearoa: Fear: New Zealand’s hostile underworld of extremists by Byron C Clark (HarperCollins, February) and Histories of Hate: The Radical Right in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Matthew Cunningham, Marinus LaRooij and Paul Spoonley (OUP, March). Richard Hill and Steven Loveridge write about the SIS – before it was the SIS and how state surveillance worked in the country when it was run by the police – in Secret History: State Surveillance in New Zealand 1900 – 1956. One description of the book reads “scholarly book but interesting subject.”