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.

Sven Lindqvist, who died in 2019, was one of Sweden's most celebrated writers, mostly in non fiction, reportage and travel. This is perhaps his best known book in English, and is a history of European racism in the 19th Century. It examines European colonial actions in Africa and South and Central America, the military developments that allowed for it, and the philosophical and political justifications for the brutality that Joseph Conrad wrote about in Heart of Darkness.

This third book in Massey's charming small memoir series is as surprising and unique as the first two. Like the others, it's at heart a family story, with secrets to be revealed. Shaw, now a professor, grew up not knowing that his family's privileged position came from ancestors farming land in Taranaki that had been confiscated from mana whenua and sold to his great grandfather, who was a member of the Armed Constabulary at the invasion of Parihaka in 1881.

The Way of the World tells the story of two friends, the author and artist Thierry Vernet, drive in a Fiat Topolino from Geneva to the Khyber Pass in the 1950s. They had little money, and stopped off in towns along the way to teach, sell paintings, and play music to earn enough to continue. It's an epic journey, in the vein of Patrick Leigh Fermor, with vivid descriptions and illustrations of local people, landscapes and extreme weather, both hot and cold.