About the book
In Auē eight-year-old Ārama was taken by his brother, Taukiri, to live with Kat and Stu at the farm in Kaikōura, setting in train the tragedy that unfolded. Ārama’s aunty Kat was at the centre of events, but silenced by abuse her voice was absent from the story. In Kataraina, Kat and her whānau take over the telling. As one, they return to her childhood and the time when she first began to feel the greenness of the swamp in her veins – the swamp that holds her tears and the tears of her tīpuna, the swamp on the land owned by Stu that has been growing since the girl shot the man.
Becky Manawatu’s new novel is the much-awaited sequel to award-winning bestseller Auē and is unflinching in its portrayal of the destructive ways people love one another and the ancestral whenua on which they stand.
‘In Kataraina, we are immersed even deeper into the lives of the Te Au whānau, their tīpuna and their whenua. This is a story of survivors. Kataraina and Auē sit in duality together, I now can’t imagine one without the other.’ — Jenna Todd (Kāi Tahu)
‘This book is electrifying – I couldn’t put it down. As well as being a great story (that kept me up all night) the writing is beautiful. I love the poetics. I love the slow weaving and then the breath-stealing discovery of the patterns that have emerged and how brilliant they are.’ — Tusiata Avia
Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe, Waitaha) is a West Coast author and journalist. She was born in Nelson and grew up in Waimangaroa, living now in Westport with her family. Her debut novel, Auē, won Aotearoa’s leading fiction prizes and became one of the country’s all-time fiction bestsellers.
