New Zealand

The Bone People

Keri Hulme

In a tower on the New Zealand coast lives Kerewin Holmes, an artist of mixed Maori and European heritage estranged from both her art and her family. A silent, wounded child arrives and unravels her carefully built solitude in this Booker Prize winning novel that captures the emotional weight of the land itself.

Pathway of the Birds

Andrew Crowe

Crowe traces one of the most remarkable feats of human migration in prehistory, the voyages that carried Maori and their Polynesian ancestors across some twenty eight million square kilometres of open ocean to settle nearly every archipelago in East Polynesia. Rigorously researched, it offers essential context for understanding how New Zealand came to be found at all.

Purakau

Various Maori Writers

These ancient Maori creation myths have passed through countless generations, and here a collection of the country's finest Maori writers retell them with fresh creativity and unexpected turns. The result is a spellbinding introduction to the stories that still shape how New Zealand understands its own beginning.

Blue Latitudes

Tony Horwitz

Two centuries after Captain Cook's voyages of discovery, Horwitz sets out to retrace them, carrying readers across hemispheres in pursuit of the man behind the legend. It is a lively and clear eyed look at both Cook's achievements and the complicated legacy he left across the Pacific.

Erewhon

Samuel Butler

Inspired by Butler's own years as a sheep farmer on the South Island, this 1872 satirical novel follows a traveler who stumbles into a topsy turvy society where illness is treated as crime and crime as illness. Considered a landmark of utopian fiction, it takes sharp aim at the certainties of Victorian society from the far edge of the world that inspired it.

The Colour

Rose Tremain

Newlyweds Joseph and Harriet Blackstone leave England for a fresh start near Christchurch, only to find the land as unforgiving as the fortune Joseph chases after striking gold in a creek bed. Tremain's historical novel captures the reckless promise and cost of the gold rush years with equal clarity.

The Luminaries

Eleanor Catton

Walter Moody arrives in New Zealand hoping to make his fortune in the gold rush and instead finds himself pulled into a secret gathering of local men investigating a series of unexplained events. Catton's Man Booker Prize winning novel is as intricately constructed as the night sky it takes its structure from, and it remains one of the finest works of fiction set during this era.

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All

Christina Thompson

Thompson weaves her own romance and marriage to a Maori man through a broader history of the cultural collision between Western settlers and New Zealand's indigenous people. The result is a compassionate memoir that treats both personal and national history with equal care.

Owls Do Cry

Janet Frame

First published in 1957, this modernist classic follows a woman coming of age in post-war New Zealand as she struggles against a society unwilling to accommodate her nature. Frame's semi-autobiographical novel remains one of the country's most significant literary works.

Between My Father and the King

Janet Frame

This collection gathers twenty eight short stories spanning the full length of Frame's career as one of New Zealand's most celebrated writers. Working from her home in Dunedin, she earned wide recognition for a body of work that this collection distills into a single, rewarding volume.

Once Were Warriors

Alan Duff

This New Zealand classic offers a raw and unflinching portrayal of a Maori family navigating poverty, violence, and identity in contemporary society. Duff's novel remains one of the most powerful and widely read works of modern New Zealand fiction.

A Maori Word A Day

Hemi Kelly

This accessible primer introduces the most common and modern words in te reo Maori, New Zealand's indigenous language, one word at a time. It makes an ideal companion in the weeks before a trip, offering a foundation that will make signs, place names, and greetings feel familiar rather than foreign.

The Pants of Perspective

Anna McNuff

Over one hundred and forty eight days, McNuff ran the length of New Zealand's Te Araroa Trail, a three thousand kilometre route across both main islands, entirely alone. Her account is as much about testing the edges of what she believed herself capable of as it is about the trail itself.

Eat Up, New Zealand

Al Brown

Brown pairs stories about New Zealand's food culture with more than one hundred and fifty recipes, updating Kiwi classics like roast lamb, meat pies, and pikelets alongside lesser known regional dishes. It is a warm, nostalgic close to any reading list, revealing as much about the country's identity as its history does.