ANNUAL BOOK A WARD

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33034, 29 September 1972, Page 11

ANNUAL BOOK A WARD

Eight finalists in the Wattle Book of the Year Award, 1972, were selected by the judges and on Thursday at a special award luncheon, the winner of the prize was announced.

The eight books to make the finals of the award this year were: "My Kind of Country,” by Douglas Badcock (Whitcombe and Tombs); "This Mrs Kingi,” by Frances Cleary (Collins); “Te Rangi Hiroa,” by Professor J.. B. Condliffe (Whitcombe and Tombs); “Two Hundred Years of New Zealand Painting,” by Gil Docking (Reed); “Artist of the New Zealand Bush,” by Rei Hamon (Collins); “Exploration New Zealand,” by John Pascoe (Reed); “Auckland: the Lively Capital,” by Una Platts; and "Smith’s Dream,”

by C. K. Stead (Longman Paul). Organised each year by the New Zealand Book Publishers’ Association, the Wat- ; tie Book of the Year Award aims to encourage writers of : both sexes to develop their ■

ability and also to provide the opportunity for their work to be published and assessed by a panel of competent judges. Sir James Wattie, sponsor of the award, says that if the claim made by some writers and publishers that

"the rap*l development of New Zealand books in recent years is dqie.in no small measure to t)j<e influence of the award” should be only partly true, he i would feel amply rewarded and greatly encouraged.,

Of the eight finalists this year, ttwo of the books are novels! Frances Cleary and C. K. I Stead have both written novels which in their own way, ' involve scenes and situatfans that are typical of New i Zealand. “This Mrs Kingi* is a warm portrait of aniold Maori woman who is seejn to be the “heart and soul «<f the Bay of Islands” and TSmith’s Dream” is a semi-fantastical novel of a one-mjan military dictatorship fin New Zealand. Tlfa one biography of the finalfats is by Professor J. B. Condfiffe, who has researched the ife of Sir Peter Buck. Sefections of work by Dougjas Badcock and Rei Hamon comprise two of the boolfa in the award final. “My Kind of Country” is a collection of 35 oil paintings by Douglas Badcock, depicting fa the main, the country a rmfad Queenstown and the West Coast, and “Artist of the New Zealand Bush” consists of 18 plates and a number of details from the drawings of Rei Hamon depicting the bush and country in the Coromandel Peninsula.

f “Two Hundred Years of t New Zealand Painting,” com- .- piled by the director of the e Auckland City Art Gallery, y comprises 206 pages of a y selection of New Zealand .- Paintings since 1769, when Captain Cook visited New

Zealand, and encompassing various periods up to 1969. “The Lively Capital” describes pioneer Auckland between 1840 and 1865, when it was the capital of New Zealand, and throughout the book is spiced with stories of social life and the attendant gossip and scandal. It includes over 100 paintings, drawings and maps. “Exploration New Zealand” is a heavily illustrated history of exploration written by the chief archivist of the National Archives in Wellington.