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New Zealand Listener
Distant minds
In his latest novel, a Kiwi author is interested in secrets, control and our inability to truly communicate with others.
3 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
A Dickensian boy in a heatwave
Hilarity is contagious. At a dinner in London, I listened as a woman described her friend's experience. He'd nipped to his Notting Hill supermarket to get some organic oat milk. As he shopped, a masked gang with knives burst in and began robbing the place. Then a fight broke out among the robbers, and soon the masked gang were stabbing each other in the aisles. Her friend stood there in his cashmere sweater, clutching his oat milk, knives and blood flying around him, and it was like, \"Oh my god...\"
2 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Senseless sensibility
Possessed of good intentions, this Austen romcom is in want of a plot.
1 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
On the wry side
A unique and charismatic New Zealander needs greater recognition, writes Keith Woodley ahead of the annual Bird of the Year flap.
2 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
McKenzie country
Flight of the Conchord-ian gets folksy and rootsy on second solo album.
2 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Trigger happy
Political satire coughs up the laughs.
1 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
A shot in the dark
For his first novel, former doctor Adam Kay mixes medicine, mystery and murder with a solid dose of humour.
2 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Solving the puzzle
I still think our finest fiction writer of crime - which is not the same as crime fiction writer was Maurice Gee.
2 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
An inspiration vacuum
Politicians don't have to be bold to win, but the safe approach can deliver underwhelming governments.
4 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Frogs in pots
My hair is not on fire. I know because I just checked. But it should be.
3 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Going to America
America! It has an incredibly high opinion of itself, but I am willing to concede there is no greater country in the world in between Canada and Mexico. It thinks everyone wants a piece of it, is just dying to cross its borders and live there for ever and ever. ICE is Trump's fever dream. We all know about New Zealand mum Sarah Shaw and her 6-year-old son being detained for three weeks at an ICE detention facility in Texas. Anyone wanting a visa is sent on a fool's errand.
2 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
All too common
Did English author Beatrix Potter but know it, she foresaw the dystopian future when she created voracious landowner Mr Tod, a tweedy fox, and the unwelcome visitor Tommy Brock, a disreputable rucksack-toting badger.
2 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Force of nature
An off-the-grid debut thriller brings to evocative life the disquieting wilderness of the West Coast.
2 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Power swerve
Former finance minister Grant Robertson's memoir goes full circle, from his political baptism in Dunedin through the toll of the Covid years to his return to Otago.
10 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
A novel take on Austen era
Big-name modern authors ponder the lasting influence of Jane Austen in epic docudrama marking her 250th anniverary.
3 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
It happens in vagus
A nerve that acts as a 'superhighway' between brain and body is increasingly seen as key to controlling inflammation, the root cause of a swathe of killer diseases. In a new book, US neurosurgeon Kevin J Tracey explores the promise - and the myths - of vagus nerve stimulation.
10 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Different worlds
An encounter with the Asmats of Southern Papua exposes a cultural divide thousands of years in the making.
5 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
High and dry
Former journo's tense, compelling crime novel is one of the best to come out of Australia in recent times.
2 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Going for a song
The NZ Youth Choir's winning ways have hit the news, but as the popularity of community singalongs shows, you don't have to be a good singer to join a choir.
8 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Oat cuisine
A Kiwi breakfast staple, oats come in different forms. So, which is healthier - wholegrain or rolled?
3 min |
August 16-22, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Gimme shelter
The axing of thousands of planned new homes and staff cuts at Kāinga Ora signal a turning point in the state's role as key provider of social housing
10+ min |
August 16-22, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Carter to the cause
Funny, enigmatic and perpetually punk: veteran musician Shayne Carter gets his own rockumentary, at last.
5 min |
August 16-22, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Towards the sunrise
In an updated history of southern Māori, archaeologist Atholl Anderson draws on whakapapa to tell a tale of survival.
7 min |
August 16-22, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Hot pursuits
Philately will get you everywhere. And so will scrapbooking and model railways and just about any other hobby.
10+ min |
August 16-22, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Meat and eat
Very Hungry Coeliac' Mel Persson's latest shows how gluten-free meals can be crowd-pleasers.
4 min |
August 16-22, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Out, dame spot
Polkinghorne, the book, is looking like a bestseller and quacking like a bestseller. It's been No 1 at Unity Books, No 1 at Time Out bookstore, but only as far as No 2 to date in the NielsenIQ BookScan national nonfiction charts. Damn Dame Jacinda Ardern and her memoir A Different Kind of Power for hogging the No 1 spot week after week. I stand with the conspiracy theorists: she is ruining my life. She has placed my Polkinghorne book in a kind of lockdown. I would love it to get to No 1 but her book is parked in the way, and what's so good about her book, anyway? So it tells the story of one of the world's most remarkable and inspirational leaders. So it elevates the human spirit. But nothing much happens in it, whereas every page of my book is filled with incident, none of it uplifting.
2 min |
August 16-22, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Hanging by a string
A classical music career hasn't quelled this violinist's adventurous spirit.
2 min |
August 16-22, 2025
New Zealand Listener
The chill factor
Soviet scholar's new book on the Cold War dispels myths and shows how much it still influences thinking in the present day.
3 min |
August 16-22, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Home sweet home
For the sake of their health and wellbeing, older people need to fight back against the pressure to downsize and declutter, argues Terry Carson.
2 min |
August 16-22, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Baby love
Kiwi journalist tells the story of her postnatal descent into serious mental trauma with humour and brutal honesty.
3 min |