The Ngaio Marsh Awards, established in 2010, promote and celebrate excellence in Kiwi crime writing, both Fiction and Nonfiction. This year‘s prize winners were announced on Friday night in Christchurch. Congratulations to all the winners!

– Best Non-Fiction: MISSING PERSONS by Steve Braunias

– Best First Novel: BETTER THE BLOOD by Michael Bennett

– Best Novel: REMEMBER ME by Charity Norman

And on the other side of the world, the 2023 Booker Prize winner was announced this morning.

Irish author, Paul Lynch, won with his fifth novel Prophet song, an exhilarating, propulsive and confrontational portrait of a country – and a family – on the brink of catastrophe. Ireland is in the grip of a government that is taking a turn towards tyranny and Eilish Stack, the novel’s protagonist, soon finds herself trying to make sense of the nightmare of a collapsing society – assailed by unpredictable forces beyond her control and desperate to do whatever it takes to keep her family together.   

Check out a short clip where Paul talks about the book here.