The Big Music by Kirsty Gunn – this year’s top book at the New Zealand Post Book Awards - is a novel the judges say is “as big as the music at its heart”.
The book is an original and
powerful work that tells the story of John Sutherland who is dying… and at the
same time creating a musical composition that will define his life. This is the
first time a fiction entry has won the top book award since 2009.
Gunn excelled herself with the
“book of her career” to date according to the judges. Chief Judge John Campbell
says: The Big Music is a wonderful literary achievement, in a year where
finalists went the extra distance for their books.
“Gunn searches for and attempts
big things, and fully achieves them. She has a bright future and I’m excited
about what lies ahead for her.”
Judge Guy Somerset said: “Gunn
sets herself what for many would be impossible challenges and then meets every
one of them brilliantly – not least making bagpipe compositions sound so
musically and intellectually stimulating that all of us are firm
converts.”
“The book completely captures
readers with a mix of compelling themes and gripping human drama.”
The judges deliberated on more
than 180 books this year and all were in clear agreement about each of the
winners who “showed a vibrant ability to transport their readers into a whole
new world”.
The New Zealand Post
Book Awards winners for 2013 are:
·
New Zealand
Post Book of the Year and Fiction winner
The Big Music by Kirsty Gunn, published by Faber & Faber publishers.
What the judges said:
“Gunn sets herself what for many
would be impossible challenges and then meets every one of them brilliantly –
not least making bagpipe compositions sound so musically and intellectually
stimulating that all of us are firm converts.”
·
Poetry The Darling North by
Anne Kennedy, published by Auckland University Press.
What the
judges said: “This book is indeed a taonga, a treasure. It opens its
heart to the Pacific and we judges all opened our hearts to it. There’s
erudition here, worn ever so lightly, sometimes in comic disguise. There’s the
satisfaction of entering a beautifully structured narrative, the experience of
energy gathering as poem follows poem, and then the brilliance of the finale, Hello
Kitty Goodbye Piccadilly. We salute the ambition of this work.”
·
Illustrated
Non-fiction Pat Hanly by Gregory O’Brien and Gil Hanly, published by Ron
Sang Publications.
What the judges said: “This
extraordinary book epitomises what the winner of Illustrated Non-fiction should
be. It is visually sumptuous and vibrant with the artist's work leaping off of
the page, has great production values, and its illustrative nature is backed up
by terrific writing. It is a book that excites and makes you want to possess
it.”
·
General
Non-fiction Civilisation: Twenty
Places on the Edge of the World by
Steve Braunias, published by Awa Press.
What the judges said: “Steve Braunias has a tremendous feel for character
and language. There are passages that would be the envy of many a novelist. The
book captures a New Zealand seldom written about and does so with a sense of,
by turns, compassion, absurdity, occasionally anger, but mostly delight. That
delight is completely contagious.”
·
Nielsen
Booksellers’ Choice
Shelter from the
Storm: The Story of New Zealand’s Backcountry Huts, by Shaun Barnett, Rob Brown and Geoff Spearpoint,
published by Craig Potton Publishing.
The Nielsen Booksellers’
Choice award is selected by New Zealand bookstores.
·
People’s
Choice
Patched: The History
of Gangs in New Zealand, by Jarrod
Gilbert, published by Auckland University Press.
Awards previously
announced:
·
Māori Language
Award Winner Ngā Waituhi O Rēhua by
Katarina Te Heikōkō Mataira, published by Huia Publishing.
·
NZSA Best
First Book Poetry Graft by
Helen Heath, published by Victoria University Press.
·
NZSA Best
First Book Fiction I Got His Blood
On Me by Lawrence Patchett, published
by Victoria University Press.
·
NZSA Best
First Book Non-fiction Moa: The
Life and Death of New Zealand’s Legendary Bird by Quinn Berentson, published by Craig Potton
Publishing.
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