Auē

Description

Title: Auē
Author: Becky Manawatu
Publisher: Mākaro Press, Wellington, 2019
Format: Paperback
Condition: Excellent

Description:

auē (verb): to cry, howl, groan, wail, bawl.

Taukiri was born into sorrow. It’s there in the sound of the sea he loves and hates, and in the guitar that was his dead father’s. His father was killed by gang violence. His mother went into hiding. Taukiri left his eight-year-old brother Ārama with their uncle and drove away, and the shame of that drives the whole novel. But Ārama is braver than he looks. He has a friend. His friend has a dog. That might be enough.

Auē won the $55,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize — NZ’s richest literary prize — and the Best First Book of Fiction prize at the 2020 Ockham NZ Book Awards. It also won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. It was the best-selling NZ novel of both 2020 and 2021. The Ockham judges called it “a breath-taking exposé of lives lived on the margins, and the fight for redemption and absolution.”

Catherine Woulfe, writing for The Spinoff: “It reminds me of The Bone People and of Once Were Warriors. The writing has a wild, intuitive sort of magic.” Arihia Latham in Landfall: “Both authors write with such earthy grace and pull you into a world that is as repelling as it is intriguing.” The Ockham judges’ description — “a breath-taking exposé of lives lived on the margins.”

It was written in Frankfurt and completed on the West Coast, published by Wellington’s Mākaro Press in a first run of 500 copies, and became one of the most read NZ novels of the decade. Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe, Waitaha) grew up in Waimangaroa.

Why We Stock It:

The most significant Māori debut novel since The Bone People. Published by an independent Wellington press in 500 copies, it became the best-selling NZ novel of two consecutive years. This is the kind of story The Gravy is here to keep on shelves.