A novel following two children living in war-time Nazi Germany has won the top fiction prize at the New Zealand Book Awards.
Ngaruawahia-based author Catherine Chidgey has been awarded the $50,000 Acorn Foundation Fiction prize for her novel, The Wish Child.
Catherine Chidgey Photo: Catherine Chidgey Fiona Pardington
Book judge Peter Wells said it was a tough pick from the final four books.
"There was a difference in opinion, both sincere and strong, among the judges, but in the end we have chosen Catherine Chidgey's book."
Persistence paid off for Chidgey, who spent 13 years onThe Wish Child.
"The book took me a long, long time to write and changed a lot over that period, so I'm just so pleased and relieved that I stuck with it and made it the book that I want it to be, she said.
Chidgey's three previous novels have all been critically acclaimed with the first, In a Fishbone Church, winning the award's best first fiction book prize almost 20 years ago.
The latest accolade was "amazing", she said. "This is the high point of my career so far."
She was making up for lost time,with her next book due out in November and another well on its way.
Other award winners
Ashleigh Young took the award for general non-fiction. Photo: supplied by Russell Kleyn
Chidgey was one of four main award winners chosen by specialist judges, from a field of 150 entries.
Andrew Johnston won the Poetry category for his collection Fits and Starts, which judge Harry Ricketts called a slow-burning tour de force.
"We feel that to reward Fits and Starts with the Poetry prize for 2017 is to reward New Zealand poetry at its most impressive and at its most promising."
Ashleigh Young took the award for general non-fiction for her collection of person essays Can You Tolerate This? after shooting to international recognition earlier this year after winning Yale University's $230,000 Windham Campbell Prize.
For Dunedin writer and historian Barbara Brookes, the $10,000 illustrated non-fiction prize for her book A History of New Zealand Women was a welcome surprise.
"It's my birthday, so this is the best birthday present ever," she said as she accepted the award.
While Brookes had been interested in women's history all her life, it was only in the 1990s that she really started thinking seriously about putting pen to paper.
Adam Dudding with his father, Robin, in 1980. Photo: Supplied
"It's been a very long project and, in a way, I'm quite pleased about that because I think my thinking about the history of women has matured," she said.
"I think the book is a testament to that."
As well as the four main award winners, Ngarino Ellis, Hera Lindsay Bird, Adam Dudding and Gina Cole were each awarded best first book in each category.
Adam Dudding's My Father's Island: A Memoir is about his late father Robin Dudding - an acclaimed New Zealand literary editor.
He said while his father would be pleased he'd written a book he might not have liked having his personal life out there in the world.
"I just thought that it was a story that was going to be interesting to tell and so other people might want to hear it.
"But having done it and having gone and collected a bunch of information and ... stories I've almost accidentally ended up with this, I guess, it's a family artifact now - just one that perversely I'm inviting the rest of the world to read as well."
The awards were the first public event of the Auckland Writers Festival, with dozens of other events taking place over the next six days.
