Sarah Hall has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. I would expect this searingly intense novel to make the 2022 shortlist. With extraordinarily sensuous prose, Sarah Hall chronicles the unfolding relationship between two lovers during a pandemic, which is sweeping through Britain with devastating effect. It's by turns erotic, disturbing, beautiful, and heartachingly sad. It's full on, strange, and a triumph of economic storytelling and finely honed prose. Stunning and shocking.

This classic piece of travel writing/memoir is the middle part of a trilogy of autobiographical writing that made Laurie Lee's career. The first part, Cider With Rosie (1959) depicts his idyllic childhood in Gloucestershire, and the final part A Moment of War (1991) is about his experiences in 1937 fighting for the republicans in the Spanish Civil War. This part is about his first visit to Spain in 1935. He spends a year walking across Spain from Vigo in the north west, playing a violin to make enough money to live on. It's an enchanting read, beautifully evoked, funny and moving.

This shattering memoir has become a classic, and is still as relevant as it ever was. Archibald Baxter (J.K Baxter's father) was a conscientious objector during the First World War, and was relentlessly and brutally treated by the New Zealand authorities. He was punished beyond the limits of his physical and mental endurance, and was told that it wasn't his service they wanted, it was his submission. Baxter remained determined not to submit, and didn't, but he was almost destroyed in the process.

This is a groundbreaking book which explores the impact and legacy of the 1881 invasion of Parihaka in Taranaki by the Crown. It also serves as the catalogue for the exhibition of the same name which was held at the City Gallery in Wellington which ran from August 2000 until January 2001. The superb publication features many artworks by Ralph Hotere, Colin McCahon, Tony Fomison and others, poetry and waiata, essays, and archival and contemporary photography.

This is a superb biographical portrait of a unique figure in New Zealand art, and the unique way in which he approached life and his art practice. O'Sullivan, who knew Hotere and his whanau well, has a brilliant way of describing the art, the man himself, and the various characters in his orbit. It's a generous portrayal of an extraordinarily single-minded artist, his appreciation of friends and collaborators, food and wine, and art.

This powerful, hypnotic novel is set in the trenches during WW1, and is a stream of consciousness meditation by Alfa, a Senegalese soldier fighting for France against the Germans. As the novel opens, Alfa's good friend Mademba is killed, and Alfa devotes himself to vengeance. It's an unrelentingly violent and brutal novel, which comments on race and masculinity, war, colonialism, and madness, but is written in a mythical, poetic style, and is bleak and sad. It has won a number of literary awards, most notably the 2021 International Booker Prize.