The man who inflated John Key’s head

New Zealand’s funniest writer, columnist and irrepressible wit Steve Braunias, is on a roll. Just as his fourth book, Smoking in Antarctica, is due to hit the nation’s bookshops, he’s received a major literary award – and pocketed $35,000.

He is one of this year’s two lucky recipients of the annual Copyright Licensing Limited (CLL) Writers’ Award for non-fiction.

Braunias says he considers himself especially fortunate as much of what he writes is complete fiction. His flair for satirical writing and making things up is a feature of Smoking in Antarctica (Awa Press, $30). The book includes a fictional account of prime minister John Key’s head as it floats from his body and wafts outside an open window.

And according to Braunias’s biography of veteran ACT party politician Sir Roger Douglas, ‘Egyptologists have identified Douglas as a recurring figure who features on the tombs of numerous kings. He is usually depicted with an arrow through his head. This may have something to do with his advice to Tutankhamen to sell off the pyramids.’

Smoking in Antarctica touches on many of Braunias’s favourite preoccupations, from the awfulness of New Zealand meals of the past (‘We believed meat should be served with fruit, especially pineapple’) to his joy at being a father (‘At three years old, she worships Christmas. So she should. All children deserve the world.’)

His humour and lyricism often combine with a reporter’s unflinching gaze. Two of the book’s most powerful chapters are on murderers Antonie Dixon and Clayton Weatherston.

Smoking in Antarctica owes its title to the bleak fortnight Braunias spent on the ice as a guest of Antarctica New Zealand. ‘It was an underworld. It was the devil’s address. It was hate at first sight,’ he writes. It left a deep impression, and a subsequent story about the assignment won him the New Zealand Travel Writer of the Year award.

In other columns, he tells of twitching a rare bird with TV presenter Jeremy Wells, wondering whether New Zealand dads can reach the heights of action man Jack Reacher, questioning whether a set of tongs killed Captain Cook, and celebrating examples of really bad spelling in public places.

The award-winning author, journalist and television writer is now settling into the book project for which he received the CLL award – writing about the ordinary lives of New Zealanders in ordinary towns across the country, a quality he thinks of as ‘New Zealandness’. The book’s title is New Zealand: The Biography. He will focus on twenty-two communities, from Winton, Mosgiel, Pegasus, Reefton and Fairlie in the South Island, to Wanganui, Mercer, Kawerau, Gladstone, Tolaga Bay and Moerewa in the North.

SMOKING IN ANTARCTICA;
SELECTED WRITING BY STEVE BRAUNIAS,
Awa Press.RRP $30,
RELEASE DATE OCTOBER 9, 2010.