The much-awaited follow-up to the award-winning international bestseller Auē;.

In Auē, eight-year-old Ārama was taken by his brother, Taukiri, to live with Kat and Stu at the farm in Kaikoura, 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 whanau 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.

Unflinching in its portrayal of the darkness, tender in its harnessing of the hope that future generations represent, Kataraina is a stunning novel that confirms Becky Manawatu as one of the most talented and powerful writers working in Aotearoa/New Zealand today.

Becky Manawatu (Ngai Tahu, Ngati Mamoe, 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.