Celebrated New Zealand writer Catherine Chidgey last night won a $64,000 fiction prize for her latest novel, The Axeman's Carnival.
Winners of this year's Ockham New Zealand Book Awards were announced at a ceremony in Auckland.
The judges described the book as unique: poetic, profound and a powerfully compelling read from start to finish."
Other big winners at the awards were Alice Te Punga Somerville, who won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry with Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised.
Broadcaster Nick Bollinger won the Booksellers Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction with Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand.
And historian Ned Fletcher won the general Non-Fiction Award for his work, The English Text of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Spokesperson Jenna Todd spoke with Ingrid Hipkiss.
