Finlay Macdonald et al. for The Conversation:
‘Last month, we enjoyed reading The New York Times Best Books of the 21st century – but were disappointed it included no Australian or New Zealand authors.
From New Zealand, even Booker winner Eleanor Catton and Women’s Prize longlisted Catherine Chidgey, writers whose books have made a significant impact in the US and UK, didn’t get a mention.
So, The Conversation’s Books & Ideas team decided to create our own Australian and New Zealand lists.
For Aotearoa New Zealand, we worked with The Conversation’s NZ editor Finlay Macdonald, a former book publisher and Listener editor. Together, we asked more than 20 local literary experts to each share their favourite NZ book of the century.
The result was a list of 20 top books, including titles by Catton and Chidgey, together with a rich treasure trove of honourable mentions (we allowed up to two each).
The three books that tied as the most picked were Jenny Bornholdt’s The Rocky Shore (2008), Chidgey’s The Axeman’s Carnival (2022) and Tina Makereti’s The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke (2018).
And what were our own picks?
. . .
Little Doomsdays by Nic Low and Phil Dadson, $45, published by Massey University Press
A mythical, futurist fable, Little Doomsdays (Massey University Press, 2023) by Nic Low (Ngai Tahu) and Phil Dadson is just a profound and astonishing book and does everything I would want to see a 21st-century book do. It looks into the future while collecting the evidence of our pasts; it is moving, funny and shocking. It is an entirely new thing in form: an indigenous story that goes beyond genre and beyond international borders, out into the universe and back, the text and images inseparable.
Recommended by Tina Makereti, Senior Lecturer, International Institute of Modern Letters, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington’
Read the rest of the list here.
