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Join the Kete community. Stay up-to-date on the latest in new books from Aotearoa, from reviews and events to giveaways.
Read our independent reviews of the latest books from Aotearoa.
Pānuihia ā mātou arotakenga tūhake o ngā pukapuka hou nō Aotearoa.
ReviewBryan Walpert’s fourth collection of lyric poems ranges in its focus from flowers to infinities, from laundry to eternity, but is founded most fully on what it is to move into midd...
Reviewed by Paula Green
8 July 2021
ReviewThe Little Ache has its genesis in Wedde's trip to Germany seven years back, as he began finding and building people and places for his sumptuously-patterned 2020 novel, The Reed W...
Reviewed by David Hill
6 July 2021
ReviewCycles repeat until one person has the courage to say, ‘This stops with me.’ Mataio (Matt) Faafetai Malietoa Brown offers the men in his barbershop a haircut with a difference: a ...
Reviewed by Greg Fleming
30 June 2021
ReviewEmma Outteridge was born into the America's Cup world and spent her twenties running Louis Vuitton's international sailing hospitality programme but she craved something more. Be...
Reviewed by Sarah Ell
28 June 2021
ReviewSelected Poems showcases the work of Harry Ricketts, one of our beloved poets. His poetry embraces humour, the necessity of books and reading, the ability of poetry to dance from m...
Reviewed by Paula Green
21 June 2021
ReviewBoth Feet in Paradise is a masterpiece of storytelling that suspends the reader in a world of relentless beauty – where one step forward is two steps back and nothing and no one ca...
Reviewed by David Hill
16 June 2021
ReviewHow to Live with Mammals is a book of reimagining and longing where Ash Davida Jane asks how we might reorient ourselves, and our ways of loving one another, as the futures that we...
Reviewed by Elizabeth Heritage
16 June 2021
ReviewSam Duckor-Jones once said that the “Big Boys” of American 20th century fiction — Hemingway, Salinger, Cheever and Carver — were among his favourites: “they’re most front of my mi...
Reviewed by Greg Fleming
14 June 2021
ReviewSista Stanup Strong! is an anthology full of astute, emotional honest personal declarations and explorations of independence that draw acerbic parallels to Vanuatu's political decl...
Reviewed by Selina Tusitala Marsh
10 June 2021
Review.“There’s so much going on in Loop Tracks that it’s hard to even accurately describe but it is a remarkable and timely novel.”
Reviewed by Holly Walker
9 June 2021
ReviewTen navigators — the late Hec Busby, Piripi Evans and Jacko Thatcher from Aotearoa New Zealand; Peia Patai and Tua Pittman from the Cook Islands; and Kālepa Baybayan, Shorty Bertel...
Reviewed by Sarah Ell
7 June 2021
ReviewAs one of Labour's most trusted and senior party members, Sir Michael Cullen had a box seat during the highs and lows of the party's fortunes. In Labour Saving, he outlines his str...
Reviewed by Jim Eagles
7 June 2021
ReviewEditor: Susette Goldsmith. Reviewer: Jim Eagles.This collection of essays, art and poetry by artists, activists, ecologists and advocates, including Philip Simpson, Anne Noble, El...
Reviewed by Jim Eagles
2 June 2021
ReviewAdrift on the Antarctic pack ice with no means of escape and no hope of rescue, Ernest Shackleton and his men are surely doomed but their remarkable story is a terrifying adventure...
Reviewed by Dionne Christian
31 May 2021
ReviewThere have been precious few books on New Zealand basketball published in the last decade, so Huw Beynon’s Ballin’ in Black is a hearty, fascinating and humorous read and a much-ne...
Reviewed by Michael Burgess
31 May 2021
ReviewAuthor: Archibald Baxter. Reviewer: David Herkt.If there is one book which necessarily modifies some part of the heroic myth of the New Zealand military in World War One, then it i...
Reviewed by David Herkt
26 May 2021
ReviewAuthor: Rosemary Riddell. Reviewer: Dionne Christian. Retired judge Rosemary Riddell shares her memories of life on the bench, complete with its humour, frustrations and poignant m...
Reviewed by Dionne Christian
26 May 2021
ReviewBurst Kisses on the Actual Wind is a tapestry of surprising and shifting verse, focused on connection and displacement, the blurring between internal landscapes and longed for real...
Reviewed by Kiri Piahana-Wong
24 May 2021
ReviewThe third and final volume of C. K. Stead’s memoirs, from leaving the University of Auckland to write full-time until today.
Reviewed by David Herkt
24 May 2021
ReviewIn Fifty Years a Feminist, Kedgley tracks the development of feminism over the last five decades and its intersection with her life, describing how she went from debutante to strop...
Reviewed by Kiran Dass
23 May 2021
ReviewThe 1960s was a period of radical conflict, when the desire for a new, socially defiant freedom affected every aspect of New Zealand culture: theatre, the visual arts, Māori activi...
Reviewed by David Herkt
19 May 2021