News
New Zealand Listener
The risks of staying schtum
Chris Hipkins seems to have decided the less said the better in the run-up to election year, leaving a vacuum for ... guess who?
4 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Infidelity - it's a hoot
An absurdly tangled love quadrangle is lit up by brilliantly witty writing.
1 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Drop in the ocean
Lean times for NZ vineyards may require a different approach to exports.
1 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Te reo rises again
At a family gathering a few years ago I was having a beer with my cousins and aunties and asked a question: “How did we lose the language?”
3 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Ensembles with scenery
A Southern Alps music festival branches out globally.
2 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
TE HIKO
On September 14, 1975, during the first Māori Language Week, a group of 50 or so left Te Hapua on what would become known as the Land March.
1 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
American dystopia
In 2020, Joey Evans lost his job as a barman as Covid swept across America, as did his wife Nicole, a waitress. The two Texans decided they had little hope of returning to the workforce.
2 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Kiwi kupu
A new book about language in Aotearoa reveals the two-way trade in words that exists between te reo Māori and NZ English.
7 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Southern descent
Echoes of Dickens in deft satire about status and ambition within a Kentucky family.
3 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Faking it
Ian McEwan's apocalyptic new novel centres on a mystery poem, a shocking death and a couple's thwarted dream life.
5 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Thrilling on all counts
Three storytellers put families through the ringer.
2 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Cheers to cutting back on booze
Smoking's link to cancer is well known and it's time the same connection was made with alcohol
2 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Alles verboten - almost
Germans love telling people off.
2 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
A rubber stamp to process
A judicial review is not about whether a decision was “good” or “bad” in policy terms. It is a legal mechanism by which the courts ensure public bodies act within their legal authority, follow fair procedures and genuinely apply their minds to the statutes that govern their powers.
2 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
WHERE DO YOU SIT?
There are steady shifts in the attitudes of most demographic groups towards te reo and culture.
2 min |
September 20-26, 2025
New Zealand Listener
Going for broke
Husband and wife team direct and star in bittersweet movie drawn from experience.
2 min |
August 30 - September 5, 2025
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 |