The return of Auē: fast favourites with Becky Manawatu

It’s rare for an Aotearoa New Zealand writer to appear at book festivals about a novel, months out from its release. But then the sequel to a book as beloved and devastating as 2019’s Auē by Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu) is no small event. As Auckland Writers Festival has aptly put it, Westport based Becky Manawatu’s debut novel took both the public and literary world by storm. The winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, it’s a book of poetic beauty charged by Aotearoa’s coastal landscape, but unrelenting in dealing with the trauma and visible damage to whanau of domestic violence and gang culture. Sequel Kataraina will be published again by Makaro Press on 1 September, and it centres its narrative around a central but quieter character in Auē, Aunty Kat.