Steve Brawnius

This is not just any other book.

However, it's up against Peter Carey's written a book called The Hollows Boys, which is about deer recovery in Fiordland, which maybe sounds like a dubious subject on the face of it, but is in fact a terrific book.

It's really a meditation on death and risk.

It's quite a gothic kind of book.

And she's

Yeah, I think it's special.

Tina Makariti has written a collection of essays which are profound in their calculation and estimation of post-colonial society.

First-rate thinker.

I think I'm right in thinking she has won the Ockham Award previously for fiction.

If she won the non-fiction prize, she would be, I think, the first person to win both those categories, which would be incredible.

But she is up against, as the others are, Northbound by Naomi Arnold.

Great reviews.

And again, that's had a real hold on people.

You know, it's an account of walking the Te Araroa Trail and what it felt like physically walking

and emotionally.

She's a stunning writer.

You know, she's written stunning journalism for years and years, and it was no sudden or abrupt evolution from her to go from that to writing a book.

I wouldn't want to call it between those four titles, actually.

Yeah, the judges have got a hard one there.

I think that's the most evenly contested category.