Six Brilliant Reads: 2025 Book Award Winners

Last year gave us some excelling reading, reflected in the books that took top honours. And what better place to start than with New Zealand’s book awards – the Ockhams. Damien Wilkins’s novel Delirious not only won the fiction prize but seems to delight everyone who reads it. The story follows Mary and Pete as they deal with old age and their memories of lost loved ones across the decades. “An absorbing, inspiring novel, and a damn fine read”,  said the judges.

The Booker Prize is one of the world’s most coveted awards and this year was given to David Szalay for Flesh. The novel follows Istvan from the age of fifteen, his coming of age in Hungary, and on through the decades, taking our protagonist to London and the world of the super-rich. The book asks "what drives a life, and what makes it worth living, and what breaks it" (Booker Prize websie).

Another popular literary award, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, went to The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, which is set in a rural part of the Netherlands in 1961. Socially distant Isobel lives alone in her mother’s house when her life is changed by the arrival of her brother’s girlfriend, Eva, upsetting Isabel’s carefully ordered life. Secrets from the war years are unearthed and nothing, it appears, is what it seems. This book was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024.

Historical fiction fans will also love The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, which was not only shortlisted for the Booker, but won The Walter Scott Prize. We’re again in the early 1960s, but this time in a fierce winter in rural England, with two couples whose marriages begin to unravel as a violent blizzard sets in. A taut emotional drama, as well as a snapshot of a period where social change hovers on the horizon, made even better by Miller's stunning prose.

In other genres, the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award went to The Book of Secrets by Anna Mazzola. And again, we’re back into the past, 17^th century Rome this time, where the plague has ravaged the city. A rumour that corpses aren’t decaying as they should has prosecutor Stefano Bracchi investigating, a case that will take him to the horrors of the Tor di Nona prison. This grippingly gothic story features magic and an extraordinary cast of characters.

The Hugo Award has been the most prestigious prize for science fiction and fantasy since 1953. Last year’s best novel award went to The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. This one’s a fantasy story with a murder mystery blended in. An Imperial officer lies dead – a tree having spontaneously erupted from his body – so Ana Dolabra, a brilliant if eccentric investigator, is called in, assisted by Dinios Kol, an engraver with a perfect memory.

Other award winners worth noting:
Percival Everett won last year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with James, a retelling of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from the point of view of Jim, the slave – a stunning read. Then there’s Michael Bennett’s third Hana Westerman thriller, Return to Blood, which won last year’s Ngaio Marsh Award for New Zealand’s best crime novel. And if Scandi Noir is your thing, The Petrona Award for Scandinavian crime novels translated into English was won by The Clues in the Fjord by Finnish author Satu Ramo.

All of the books mentioned here are available to borrow from Hastings District Libraries. Happy reading!

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