Tuai takes out top award at Ockhams
16 May 2018
The evocative story of Tuai, one of the first Māori men to travel to England in the early 19th century won University of Auckland Professor Alison Jones and Professor Kuni Kaa Jenkins the Illustrated Non-Fiction category of the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards last night.
Judges commented that Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds is “empathetically written, deftly allowing the reader a window into this contested time of encounter, conversion and enterprise as people met, traded, interacted and travelled”.
“The text and illustrations work in concert, presenting a rounded and rich experience for the reader, enhancing the breadth and depth of the research explored within.”
Tuai’s hapū descendants are also delighted
Alison and Kuni are thrilled to win this category.
"Tuai’s hapū descendants are also delighted,” says Alison.
“The prize money will contribute to Ngare Raumati’s trip to London in September. They will travel with some of Tuai’s drawings, which are being loaned to the Royal Academy of the Arts’ exhibition, Oceania, commemorating 250 years since James Cook left for the Pacific.”
Read a feature about Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds in August UniNews 2017.
It was also a successful night for Auckland University Press who published the winning book of poetry, Night Horse by esteemed poet Elizabeth Smither. Judges described the book as “a stimulating, thoughtful and pleasurable read, distinctive for the way in which Smither consistently makes poems that get ‘lifted into the light’”.
Distinguished Professor Dame Anne Salmond’s book Tears of Rangi, Experiments Across Worlds (AUP, 2017) was a finalist in the Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General Non-Fiction.
Other winners were: Driving to Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Father by veteran NZ Listener journalist Diana Wichtel, which won the Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General Non-Fiction and The New Animals by Wellington writer Pip Adam, which won the $50,000 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize.
And in good news for New Zealand's literary community, naming sponsor Ockham Residential confirmed its sponsorship of the national awards for a further five years.
The first image by by Antoine Chazal is after Jules-Louis Lejeune, 1826, and is held in the Alexander Turnbull Library (C-082-102)