The Aotearoa Books of the Year 2023

The best books published in New Zealand this year, according to a bunch of good readers and books editor Claire Mabey.

This year has been a big one for New Zealand publishing – I do not envy the current crop of Ockham NZ Book Awards judges their task of longlisting, shortlisting, and picking winners for next year’s accolades. Fiction was particularly strong, with recognisable names releasing quality new work, and the suite of debut novels unearthing a new generation of talent. Nonfiction – harder to get a grip on due to the enormous scope of the genre – produced a decent shelf’s worth for adults and for children.

Before we get to the best New Zealand books published this year, here are some succinct notes from a year of reading and publishing across 2023:

• New Zealand women are at the forefront of fiction (see below).
• New Zealand women are the forefront of nonfiction (see below).
• BWB still own accessible nonfiction: they published the 100th book (and then kept going) in their massively successful Texts series, a publishing innovation that has introduced tens of thousands of Aotearoa readers to acutely intelligent, short nonfiction.
• There were two significant cases of double-success: Catherine Chidgey had two novels in the bestseller lists for weeks (The Axeman’s Carnival and Pet); and poet essa may ranapiri won two prestigious awards: the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry, and the Keri Hulme Award.
• There was one significant case of Chloe Gong (author of the phenomenally successful Flesh and False Gods trilogy, and TikTok star) who, at the age of 21, has been named one of the year’s Forbes 30 under 30.
• The most beautiful diary-esque/stationery-adjacent publication, hands down with no competition, goes to Whakawhetai Gratitude by Hira Nathan (Allen & Unwin NZ), a bilingual gratitude journal that is so fulsome and gorgeous it deserves a category of its own (which we have done here, listing in the notable observations).
• Two cool online platforms arrived to help us buy books better. BookHub is “the first and only site in the English-speaking world that offers book buyers access to the inventory of independent bookstores nationwide, all in one place”. An absolute game-changer for finding and buying local. And Alphabet Book Club is a book order and delivery service specifically catering for young readers looking for positive LGBTQI+ representation. 

Books of the year: Children’s

My Aunt Honor, by Gillian Torkler and illustrated by Adele Jackson (picture book, Bateman)

My Aunt Honour is a welcome change for parents bored of princesses, fairies and unicorns. Beautifully illustrated with victory rolls, flounces and frills, this is a story full of female stereotypes without the handsome prince. While her friends stay home to knit scarves for the brave boys on the front line, Honor is off changing spark plugs for Royal Airforce planes. And although she gets blown up on the last page, that gory end can be carefully omitted by any mousey mothers. But we all know kids like the gory stuff. | Emily Broadmore, Folly Journal