Ockham Book Awards
In 1996 the New Zealand Book Awards (1976-1995) and the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards (1968-1993) amalgamated to become the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
The winner of the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize is awarded $50,000, while the winners of each of the other three categories claim $10,000 each; in addition, there is a further prize of $2500 awarded for the Best First Book.
Shop the nominees in each category below.
Down The Bay: A Natural and Cultural History of Abel Tasman National Park by Philip Simpson
$79.99 NZD
Category: Illustrated Non-Fiction
Abel Tasman National Park was a war-time baby, born in 1942 to protect the wonderful sequence of forested beaches and headlands, and which have become much-loved by both countless New Zealanders and visitors alike. Down the Bay is a tribute to this gem of New Zealand's national park system. Philip Simps ...Show more
Drawn Out - A Seriously Funny Memoir by Tom Scott
$45.00 NZD
Category: Non-Fiction | Reading Level: very good
Secondhand. Tom Scott is a political commentator, political cartoonist, satirist, scriptwriter, playwright, raconteur and funny man. He's been drawing political cartoons for Wellington's Dominion Post since 1988, was in the Press Gallery and was famously banned by PM Muldoon. He's observed David Lange, ...Show more
Driving To Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Father by Diana Wichtel
$45.00 NZD
Category: Non-Fiction | Reading Level: very good
A Winner in Ockhams New Zealand Book Awards - Both the Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General Non-Fiction 2018, and Best First Book Award for General Non-Fiction 2018. As a young child Diana Wichtel is brought up in Vancouver, Canada. Her mother is a Catholic New Zealander, her father a Polish Jew ...Show more
Edgeland and Other Poems by David Eggleton
$27.50 NZD
Category: Poetry | Reading Level: near fine
The poetry in David Eggletons new collection "possesses an intensity and driven energy, using the poets recognisable signature oratory voice, strong in beat and measure, rooted in rich traditions of chant, lament and ode.Mashing together the lyrical and the slangy, celebrating local vernaculars whilesim ...Show more
Fearless: The Extraordinary Untold Story of New Zealand's Great War Airmen by Adam Claasen
$59.99 NZD
Category: Non-Fiction | Reading Level: very good
More than 1000 New Zealanders served in the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Air Force. Several, including Sir Keith Park, later became senior air commanders of the Second World War. Among them were leading air aces, including Keith Caldwell, Ronald Bannerman and the famous tenn ...Show more
Fight for the Forests: The Pivotal Campaigns That Saved New Zealand's Native Forests by Paul Bensemann
$69.99 NZD
Category: Illustrated Non-Fiction | Reading Level: near fine
The remarkable and inspring story of how New Zealand's native forests were saved between 1960 and 2000. The greatest success stories of the modern environmental movement in New Zealand were the public campaigns to save our native forests, beginning in the 1960s with the battle to stop Lake Manapouri be ...Show more
Filming the Colonial Past - The New Zealand Wars on Screen by Annabel Cooper
$49.99 NZD
Category: Non-Fiction | Reading Level: near fine
The New Zealand Wars were defining events in the nation's history. Filming the Colonial Past, an engaging new book from Annabel Cooper, tells a story of filmmakers' fascination with these conflicts over the past 90 years.From silent screen to smartphone, and from Pakeha adventurers to young Maori songwr ...Show more
Five Strings by Apirana Taylor
$35.00 NZD
Category: Fiction | Reading Level: very good
Mack is a larger-than-life street philosopher and Puti's a former gang member looking for something more. Together, they're at the bottom of the heap. They live out their lives in a haze of smoke and alcohol, accompanied by a host of other characters scraping by on the fringes of society. Will any of th ...Show more
Flow: Whanganui River Poems by Beautrais Airini
$30.00 NZD
Category: Poetry | Reading Level: very good
Wherever bodies of water are, people settle, and stories collect. Six generations of poet Airini Beautrais' family have lived near the Whanganui River, the restless, all-encompassing figure at the heart of her fourth collection Flow. Flow is a brilliant polyphony of stories - large, small, geological, e ...Show more
Fully Clothed and So Forgetful by Hannah Mettner
$25.00 NZD
Category: Poetry | Reading Level: very good
A Winner in Ockhams New Zealand Book Awards - Best First Book Award for Poetry 2018 Fully Clothed and So Forgetful is an intimate, intelligent first book by Hannah Mettner. Moving through love, motherhood, sexuality, family and anxiety, these poems infuse universal themes with wit and sudden, even shock ...Show more
Galleries of Maoriland: Artists, Collectors and the Māori world, 1880-1910 by Blackley Roger
$75.00 NZD
Category: Illustrated Non-Fiction | Reading Level: near fine
Galleries of Maoriland introduces us to the many ways in which European colonists to New Zealand (called Pakeha by the indigenous Maori) discovered, created, propagated and romanticised the Maori world at the turn of the century summed up in a popular nickname describing New Zealand; Maoriland. It could ...Show more
Goodbye Maoriland by Bourke Chris
$59.99 NZD
Category: Illustrated Non-Fiction | Reading Level: very good
Be it `Tipperary' or `Pokarekare', the morning reveille or the bugle's last post, concert parties at the front or patriotic songs at home, music was central to New Zealand's experience of the First World War. In Good-Bye Maoriland, the acclaimed author of Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular ...Show more