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Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

BooksJanuary 27, 2022

Reading Imagining Decolonisation, the slim book that invites us to dream big

Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

Imagining Decolonisation came out two years ago and is still one of the bestselling books in the country – it topped the charts at Unity Books Wellington last year. Anahera Gildea responds. 

When we first moved in, the house across the road was being renovated. We met the father-son builders who were on the job from seven every morning until about seven at night, most days a week. We watched as the small 1950s bungalow was stripped down to a shell, its innards gutted, the foundations repiled, new interior walls erected, a second storey constructed, and so on, accompanied by diggers and weatherboards and skill saws and sanders, painters with sunhats on sturdy ladders, and the inaudible babble of the national programme on the radio all day. The father-son were helping each other out and though they called it renovation it was really a total rebuild. The house that arose on the land where the old one used to be bore absolutely no resemblance to its predecessor. 

Before the summer finished, they built a deck, a new set of stairs, and had the grounds landscaped – the hyacinths uprooted and the native flax, phormium Dark Delight, splayed liberally around its collar. An aluminium shed was delivered, and then a second one for around the back. New concrete was poured for their cars to park on, a dispute settled about the boundaries and the rates with the neighbours up the hill, and a strip of “council” land left to demarcate the space between them. 

On re-reading Imagining Decolonisation, by Bianca Elkington, Moana Jackson, Rebecca Kiddle, Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Mike Ross, Jennie Smeaton, and Amanda Thomas, I was struck again by Jackson’s analogy of two houses that do the same job of providing shelter for people but have each been constructed on different foundations. The pou of the settler-style whare may not have been retrieved from Huiteananui, their kōwhaiwhai patterns can be unrecognisable if not illegible, and their kawa does not set the eye of the ancestor toward the sun. The ideologies that built the houses of the coloniser have often been theorised as predatory, consumerist, and based on irredeemable beliefs that all things belong to them.

Seven people photographed together in a bookstore, happy
Mike Ross, Ocean Mercier, Jennie Smeaton, Rebecca Kiddle, Moana Jackson, Amanda Thomas, Bianca Elkington (Photo: Supplied)

The title of this book implies the possibility of an Indigenous utopian future, but does not presuppose a dystopian settler one. There are no suggestions of “privilege” calculators that tax descendents of colonisers who continue to benefit from the unlawful, historical, acquisition of land. There are no expectations for home owners to bequeath their land back to iwi and hapū on their deathbeds, no fantastical narratives of the settler population storming the Beehive in protest over lack of diversity, and there are no assimilationist policies to pepperpot Pākehā into Māori communities across the motu in order to redistribute wealth and re-socialise them. There was none of that kind of imagining. That would be sedition. Instead, the seven contributors have been generous with their own stories, their knowledge, and their goodwill. They have written a collaborative text that takes as common ground an agreed upon history of the process of colonisation. The complexities we collectively face in our efforts to transform our society are laid down as the groundwork for a broad readership to understand the structures of the colonial context in which we live.

The word “decolonisation” has been around since the 1930s and, as Ocean Mercier explains, “In the Aotearoa context … decolonising does not mean the removal or withdrawal of colonial occupiers so much as a fundamental shift in the ideas, knowledges and value sets that underpin the systems which shape our country.” 

Decolonisation seeks to address and reverse the effects of colonisation, and though it is a slippery concept and unlikely to furnish us with a handy to-do list, the authors do a staggeringly good job at unpacking it for us so that we, the marea, can have a go at the imagining part.

Photo of a book standing upright on a table of books laid flat.
One little book to benevolently rule them all (Photo: Unity Wellington)

Mike Ross’s essay opens the book and invites us to experience the mid-ocean maelstrom that is the Throat of Parata, the chaos and unmanageability of that colossal whirlpool a visceral reminder of the tumult that colonisation wrought at the time of encounter. But in order to de-construct anything, we must first understand what it is. 

The reader is then guided through an overview of colonisation that is restrained but does not equivocate. Moana Jackson’s useful analogy of two houses is engaged, each developed according to its own systems and traditions, and the rākau is passed smoothly to Ocean Mercier, who maintains the analogy and invites us to observe ourselves critically as we try to fathom the two structures: their foundations, their norms, their kawa. The juxtaposition of these two houses alone may deliver revelations for some readers but for many of us, the continual process of colonisation and the seeming unfeasibility of being able to resist it, undermine it, decentre it, will still be the takeaway. Audre Lorde’s provocative and much quoted dictum, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” feels crucial to this conversation.

Most days I write in my She’d. This is a dilapidated structure in our back yard that I (she) resurrected enough to store things in and keep them mostly dry. It’s 3x2m, has neither glass in the windows nor a functional door but for all intents and purposes, is a shed. There is only one corner that is sufficiently dry for me to sit in and type but the view is lush, the birds are noisy, and there is no wifi. 

We have been on this street for years now and I have watched as the renovation frenzy has, one by one, overtaken in upgrades, subdivisions, and remodeling. We stumbled into home ownership before the current crisis, before the average house price in Aotearoa was around the $1 million mark, when it still felt possible for first home buyers to save for a deposit and live. In 2018 the Māori home ownership rate was 31% compared to 52% across the population and now with Covid exacerbating almost every economic and power imbalance, it seems the boundaries of our “properties” continue to be clearly demarcated by fence and road, by saw and hammer, and by the sweat of those who are paid to maintain them. 

It is true, the word decolonisation is problematic. It continues to address colonisation as the central issue, keeps the structures and scaffolding of our asylum in plain view, and therefore is in danger of obscuring our true desire for recovery, rangatiratanga, and as Moana Jackson puts it, “an ethic of restoration”. That is not the only difficulty with the word. In familiar colonising fashion, language that might have once been a productive call to arms, or a snag in the mind of the settler, has been absorbed into the rhetoric of the woke revolution (which I am undoubtedly part of), and risks losing its ability to transform, to create real social change rather than paying passionate lip service. The authors of Imagining Decolonisation do not shy away from these challenges but nor do they belabour the semantics. Each essay addresses the term “decolonisation” and its varied usefulness without getting stuck in lexical bunkers, preferring to keep the reader focused on the work to be done rather than the word itself. 

Rebecca Kiddle and Amanda Thomas interrogate the identity of Pākehā as descendants of settler-colonisers, as recipients of white privilege, and as co-victims of the effects of colonisation. The discussion of intergenerational trauma was challenging to read and left me musing on the barely perceptible line between keeping the reader on the page and circling fragility.

Nevertheless, one of the persistent drivers of the book is that colonisation is here to stay and that any rebuild we engage in, whether it be of our minds or the colonial machinery, should be done in concert with each other. We cannot disaggregate life, we are interdependent – our stories tell us that. Of how “our ancestors crossed Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa”, how they survived the Throat of Parata, and how we might too. Jackson’s discussion of restoring justice, and values, and balance, goes far beyond decolonisation. It is the hopeful future based on a whakapapa paradigm, on the ecology of relationships, and on the action of relinquishing of power and authority.

Two older people, a man and a woman, hugging in a bookstore
Moana Jackson at Unity Wellington’s celebration for the book, last year (Photo: Unity Wellington via Facebook)

My grandfather was a builder. He built his own house, houses for other people, businesses, and numerous other structures. He also built a series of huge corrugated iron sheds out the back of his rural property to keep his things in. Though they all had doors, only some of them were locked, and inside at least one of these monstrous barns was an emporium of detritus – metres of net for fishing, a tractor and trailer, thick ropes slung on big hooks, hoses coiled on the ground, an inflatable dinghy, giant gumboots, old oars, orange and yellow life jackets stacked on their backs and slumped in corners, and the constant smell of the sea. Once you acclimatised to the tang and the dark and the cavernous size, the number of spiders that were probably watching you, and arranged the life jackets into an adequate sofa, making sure all the buckles were tucked in, you could hide in there for ages and dream. 

That is what Imagining Decolonisation asks every New Zealander to do. It’s not a decolonisation handbook, it’s an invitation to understand, to self-educate, to investigate our complicity, our resistance, our privilege; and to interrogate the structures of power that maintain the status quo. It is a book aimed at even the most skittish reader of decolonisation discourse. An ethic of restoration isn’t a refurbishment, or colonial upgrade, or makeover. There is no correct wallpaper that will hide the blemishes, no carpet that will even out the sloping floor, and no volume of sheds that can mitigate invasion. To restore something is to heal it. 

 

Entreaty

 

I am the maiden native born

who dug her toes in the wet sand

whose seashell collections filled her hand

and the breeze blew her inky hair

down her back without a care

before there was a house that Jack built.

 

I am the maiden native born

who married a man making his way

though the elders frowned on it back in the day

they signed on paper and made friends with the crown

creating the house that Jack built.

 

I am the maiden all forlorn

who marched and picketed in front of her accusers

with legs that buckle and a back that bruises

so all the children I might bear

can walk head high without fear

to navigate the house that Jack built.

 

I am the maiden all forlorn

who hears the phrases seventh generations say

like “I’m not responsible for things back in the day.

Those bloody Māoris get handouts cos they’re brown.”

so in the name of safekeeping it’s all owned by the crown

here in the house that Jack built.

 

I am the maiden all forlorn

raised and educated in our civilised nation

who got a degree in politicisation

from the blankets and muskets repeatedly thrown

as clever accusations by a colonial clone

knocking at the house that Jack built.

 

I am the maiden NZ born

who walks through Tāmaki seeing eyes in faces

of hundreds of people of all colours and races

whose mother taught her not to be racist

while her friends call her cell to tell her the latest:

they’re dismantling the house that Jack built.

Imagining Decolonisation by Rebecca Kiddle, Bianca Elkington, Moana Jackson, Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Mike Ross, Jennie Smeaton and Amanda Thomas (Bridget Williams Books, $15) is available from Unity Books Auckland and Wellington

Keep going!
Image: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller
Image: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller

BooksJanuary 27, 2022

Rise and shine, the Ockham longlists are out

Image: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller
Image: Getty Images, additional design by Tina Tiller

The embargo’s toast so here, finally, are the finalists of the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Below we’ve listed the 10 books contending each of the four major categories, followed by analysis from books editor Catherine Woulfe and poetry editor Chris Tse. We’ve popped an asterisk beside the books that are debuts, and therefore up for a best first book prize.

Shortlists will be announced on 2 March, with winners revealed at a ceremony in May.

The Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction ($60,000 prize)

A Good Winter by Gigi Fenster (Text Publishing)

Aljce in Therapy Land by Alice Tawhai (Lawrence & Gibson)

Entanglement by Bryan Walpert (Mākaro Press)

Everything Changes by Stephanie Johnson (Vintage, Penguin Random House)

Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly (Te Herenga Waka University Press)*

Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka (Huia Publishers)

Loop Tracks by Sue Orr (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

She’s a Killer by Kirsten McDougall (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

The Pink Jumpsuit: Short fictions, tall truths by Emma Neale (Quentin Wilson Publishing)

Unsheltered by Clare Moleta (Scribner Australia, Simon & Schuster)*

Four book covers
Your 2022 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction shortlist, maybe? (Images: Supplied)

Catherine Woulfe writes: 

There are some great books on this list, flashes of brilliance that lit up a shit year. And only one dude! Huh.

My top four, in ascending order of awesomeness: Aljce in Therapy Land, She’s A Killer, Greta and Valdin, Unsheltered. Of course, awesomeness is no guarantee of a win. (See: The Absolute Book, which dipped out on a shortlist spot in 2020; Sorrow and Bliss, which did likewise last year.)

But let’s linger on Unsheltered for a moment. My favourite. It has a compulsive plot, a racing heart; it’s one of those novels you carry with you. A mother is desperately searching for her eight-year-old daughter across a desiccated, disintegrating country. The climate’s going exponentially to hell and so is society. The country feels like Australia, although Clare Moleta’s been coy on that. (Maybe so that she doesn’t do herself out of New Zealand’s biggest fiction prize, which seems to prefer fiction set close to home?)

Black and white portrait photograph of a middle-aged woman with curly hair, looking to camera.
Clare Moleta (Photo: Stan Alley)

There’s so much thirst and heat and dust and walking, walking, walking – but then there are scenes that sing with life, scream with it, like those David Attenborough documentaries where you watch green rip through the desert. Elizabeth Knox reviewed Unsheltered for us – “in awe at what Clare has achieved”, she wrote – and we published an essay by Moleta. “There’s really nothing in the book that isn’t happening now,” she wrote. “It’s just not happening to me yet.” 

That said, I suspect the Acorn and the sweet sweet $60k will go to Sue Orr for her novel about abortion / adoption / autism Loop Tracks, with Rebecca K Reilly handed the consolation prize of best first book for the knowing, lol-filled Greta and Valdin, about siblings muddling through in Auckland.

Photographic portaits of two women, one middle-aged in front of a bookcase glowing with sun, the other younger, on a dark background in dark clothes.
Sue Orr and Rebecca K Reilly: the 2022 fiction winners? (Photos: Ebony Lamb)

This longlist also features a couple of books I couldn’t finish or wished I hadn’t. This hasn’t happened for a couple of years; maybe it’s just where my head’s at, but I looked at this list and was overwhelmed with exhaustion. So I want to stop for a sec and recognise the thrillers (not just the literary thrillers), the “commercial fiction”, the stuff that’s easy and fun to read – the stuff that’s not on this list. There’s just as much craft in those books, just as much texture. Looking at you, J.P. Pomare, and you Ben Sanders and Catherine Robertson and Nicky Pellegrino and Eileen Merriman. (The latter did get a moment in the sun for 2019’s Moonlight Sonata, but her most recent novel Double Helix, and 2020’s The Silence of Snow, were stronger.) While we’re here: Hat-tip to Allen & Unwin, which has just rolled out a prize for commercial fiction writers, paying a $10,000 advance against royalties. 

The Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry ($10,000 prize)

Bird Collector by Alison Glenny (Compound Press)

Ghosts by Siobhan Harvey (Otago University Press)

Party Legend by Sam Duckor-Jones (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

Rangikura by Tayi Tibble (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

Sea-light by Dinah Hawken (Te Herenga Waka University Press)

Sleeping with Stones by Serie Barford (Anahera Press)

The Sea Walks into a Wall by Anne Kennedy (Auckland University Press)

Tōku Pāpā by Ruby Solly (Te Herenga Waka University Press)*

Tumble by Joanna Preston (Otago University Press)

Whai by Nicole Titihuia Hawkins (We Are Babies Press)*

Chris Tse writes: 

Many of these collections explore the impact of the past on the present, and the impermanence of modern life.

There’s no such thing as a lock when it comes to book awards, but if there were to be one for the poetry longlist, it’s Tayi Tibble’s Rangikura. Tibble’s second collection is outrageous and brazen in its weaving of the past with the present. “My ancestors ride wit me,” she proclaims. “Don’t tell them what they would do./I know them better than you.”

Three poetry books, two cloudy, sea-tones, one (Rangikura) hot pink street art.
(Images: Supplied)

In Ghosts, Siobhan Harvey channels the spirits and apparitions that lurk in our memories and the past with tales of migration, dislocation and fractured relationships. Serie Barford’s collection is an elegiac portrait of the poet moving through the seasons of grief, from the immediate response to the passing of a loved one to slowly accepting that “the living sing/so do the dead”. 

The ever-dependable Dinah Hawken’s Sea-light draws from familiar themes of nature and global connections. There’s a growing unease lurking between its lines: “welcome to a world within a world/where one side of a wound tends to seek the other.” Throughout the book, the sea breaks and reconvenes, holding on to hope in spite of the direction the world is moving in. 

There are some uncanny parallels between Sea-light and Anne Kennedy’s The Sea Walks into a Wall, from the recurring water imagery to the appearance of silence in both books’ final lines. Kennedy’s sprawling, image-laden poems are filled with the emotional and intellectual heft we’ve come to expect from her. In a world of uncertainty, Kennedy’s voice is a comforting balm.

Tumble is Joanna Preston’s second collection. Her assured and inventive poems are imbued with the dappled light of nostalgia and propelled by the rise and fall of life’s small and big moments, and the absences that follow us like shadows. This is a collection that feels both lived-in and open to the possibilities of what’s to come.

Covers of four books of poetry
Your 2022 poetry shortlist, maybe? (Images: Supplied)

Although all of these books exhibit innovative or experimental tendencies, two in particular bend language and poetic forms into new and unexpected shapes. Sam Duckor-Jones’ enigmatic Party Legend mixes long, challenging pieces with heartfelt meditations on his queer and Jewish identities. Meanwhile, Alison Glenny’s genre-defying Bird Collector employs prose poems, erasure, footnotes and fragmented text to create a fever dream of mystery and discovery.

There are only two debut collections on this year’s longlist: Tōku Pāpā by Ruby Solly, and Whai by Nicole Titihuia Hawkins. Both of these first-time authors have crafted bold, openhearted collections that share their experiences of being, and surviving as, young Māori women in the 21st century.

And then of course there are the notable omissions, of which there are many. Where’s Emma Barnes? Kirsten Le Harviel? Or Liz Breslin? And what about Ash Davida Jane, whose How to Live with Mammals was runner-up for the UK’s 2021 Laurel Prize, or Tim Gregc’s historical epic All Tito’s Children? That these ambitious and acclaimed works didn’t make the longlist is a sign that Aotearoa poetry is in rude health. Poetry readers and lovers are truly spoilt for choice.

General Non-Fiction Award ($10,000 prize)

After Dark: Walking into the Nights of Aotearoa by Annette Lees (Potton & Burton)

Bloody Woman by Lana Lopesi (Bridget Williams Books)

Come Back to Mona Vale: Life and Death in a Christchurch Mansion by Alexander McKinnon (Otago University Press)*

Enough Horizon: The Life and Work of Blanche Baughan by Carol Markwell (The Cuba Press)

From the Centre: A Writer’s Life by Patricia Grace (Penguin Random House)

Helen Kelly: Her Life by Rebecca Macfie (Awa Press)

He Kupu Taurangi: Treaty Settlements and the Future of Aotearoa New Zealand by Christopher Finlayson and James Christmas (Huia Publishers)*

The Alarmist: Fifty Years Measuring Climate Change by Dave Lowe (Te Herenga Waka University Press)*

The Mirror Book by Charlotte Grimshaw (Vintage, Penguin Random House)

Voices from the New Zealand Wars | He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books)

Catherine Woulfe writes: 

A whole phalanx of essay writers is entirely missing in action. Where are Nina Mingya Powles, Michelle Langstone, Danyl Mclauchlan, John Summers, Megan Dunn, Ingrid Horrocks? Any of them could sit comfortably on a shortlist; it’s bizarre, incredible, that they didn’t even make the longlist. That none of them did. I’m particularly gutted for Powles. Her memoir-ish collection Small Bodies of Water glows with colour and expertise and poetry; I wrote about it, ecstatically, here. I thought Powles might even beat Charlotte Grimshaw, if the judges were of the “how dare that Stead girl air the family’s dirty laundry” variety. 

Black and white photograph of Charlotte Grimshaw as a baby with her mother, Kay.
That Stead girl with her mother, Kay (Photo: Marti Friedlander, Courtesy of the Gerrard and Marti Friedlander Charitable Trust; design work Tina Tiller)

At awards time any category that has the word “general” in it is a suckful category to be stuck in. At the Ockhams, “general” equals sprawling, disparate, apples and oranges – good luck in there. But it’s also usually a colourful category, a vibrant one. This year, in ditching those six essay collections, the judges have managed to zap the joy from it almost entirely. They’ve honed in on anything the slightest bit bright and breezy – even if it’s very brainy, too – and blown it out of the water. Fun? Zap. Nostalgic? Zap. Accessible? Ye gods, get it gone, zap. What’s left behind is concentrated and meaty, loooong, a serious undertaking. 

Four book covers, three featuring photographs of women.
Your shortlist for the general non-fiction prize, maybe? (Images: Supplied)

Exceptions: Charlotte Grimshaw and Patricia Grace, where the writing is so good you hardly notice you’re covering heavy country.

From the Centre is short, small, heavy with story and mana. It arrived in my letterbox on the same day as the third volume of C.K. Stead’s memoir. That book alone – one-third of Stead’s life in letters – was twice the size of Grace’s memoir in its entirety. Stead did not make the cut.

Anyway, shortlist picks: Grace, Rebecca Macfie for her deeply reported Helen Kelly bio, Vincent O’Malley for his fascinating new way in to Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa. With the win, of course, to Grimshaw. Categories be damned (especially this one, and especially this year) – The Mirror Book is indisputably the book of 2021. But now I have a niggle of worry that she’s about to be zapped to bits, too, due to brazenly writing too well. 

The Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction ($10,000 prize)

Bill Hammond: Across the Evening Sky by Peter Vangioni with Tony de Lautour, Rachael King, Nic Low, Paul Scofield and Ariana Tikao (Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū)

Conversātiō: In the Company of Bees by Anne Noble with Zara Stanhope and Anna Brown (Massey University Press)

Dressed: Fashionable Dress in Aotearoa New Zealand 1840 to 1910 by Claire Regnault (Te Papa Press)

He Ringatoi o ngā Tūpuna: Isaac Coates and his Māori portraits by Hilary and John Mitchell (Potton & Burton)

Hei Taonga mā ngā Uri Whakatipu | Treasures for the Rising Generation: The Dominion Museum Ethnological Expeditions 1919–1923 edited by Wayne Ngata, Anne Salmond, Natalie Robertson, Amiria Salmond, Monty Soutar, Billie Lythberg, James Schuster and Conal McCarthy et al (Te Papa Press)

Joanna Margaret Paul: Imagined in the Context of a Room by Lucy Hammonds, Lauren Gutsell and Greg Donson (Dunedin Public Art Gallery)

Nuku: Stories of 100 Indigenous Women by Qiane Matata-Sipu (QIANE+co)*

Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau by Lucy Mackintosh (Bridget Williams Books)*

Te Puna Waiora: The Distinguished Weavers of Te Kāhui Whiritoi by Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku, Donna Campbell, Awhina Tamarapa and Nathan Pōhio (Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū)

The Architect and the Artists: Hackshaw, McCahon, Dibble by Bridget Hackshaw (Massey University Press)*

Catherine Woulfe writes: 

Last year this category was a lineup of simple, stupefying beauty. This time it’s much more complex. These are not books to be gaped at nor absently flicked through. 

I fancy the chances of Bridget Hackshaw, and of Lucy Mackintosh for her book of Tāmaki Makaurau history, Shifting Grounds. A gentle confrontation of ignorance, says Anna Rawhiti-Connell in a stunning review that we’ll publish on Auckland Anniversary Day. 

Three book covers, all moody dark blues, browns, stark white.
Three favourites for the illustrated non-fiction win (Images: Supplied)

Words often suffer in pursuit of aesthetics but the writing in Across the Evening Sky is exceptional. We published one of the essays, the stand-out, by Nic Low. There’s also a piece of short fiction by Rachael King. You don’t have to be into Bill Hammond’s art to appreciate this book.

But I’d love to see this year’s prize go to Nuku. It’s delightfully lowbrow – a spinoff of a blog, good heavens – and it’s bursting with radiant photos of wāhine. On the land, in their libraries, at marae, at the golf course. 

Cover of a book, dominated by photograph of a Māori wahine, plastered in mud, standing against foliage.
Nuku – not a hardback, no bells and whistles, but a stunner nonetheless (Image: Supplied)

Many of the photos are showstoppers. More importantly, there’s a palpable sense of trust, of straight-on-ness, that’s startling because you don’t see it too often. These wāhine stare directly at the camera. They feel safe enough to shut their eyes, or smile full tilt, or both at the same time. They tell their stories in first person – I, I, I. This is hard to get right as an editor, it’s so easy to let people waffle or to squash their voice entirely. Matata-Sipu has it down.

Notably, Nuku is not a hardback, nor does it have any of the production elements (like the cormorant-black edging of Hei Taonga mā ngā Uri Whakatipu, Conversātiō’s strokable fuzzy navy cover, or Dressed’s lovely quilted one) that can make a book seem important. That will count against it – but the flipside, of course, is accessibility. And surely there’s points in that. 

Good luck, all, and see you back here in March for the shortlists.

But wait there's more!