The Axeman's Carnival

WINNER OF THE JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION AT THE 2023 OCKHAM NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS
A dazzling portrayal of humanity and the natural world that perfectly balances violence and humor
Tama is just a helpless chick when he is rescued by Marnie, and this is where his story might have ended. “If it keeps me awake,” says Marnie's husband Rob, a farmer, “I'll have to wring its neck.” But with Tama come new possibilities for the couple's future. Tama can speak, and his fame is growing. Outside, in the pines, his father warns him of the wickedness wrought by humans. Indoors, Marnie confides in him about her violent marriage. The more Tama sees, the more the animal and the human worlds—and all the precarity, darkness and hope within them—bleed into one another. Like a stock truck filled with live cargo, the story moves inexorably towards its dramatic conclusion: the annual Axeman's Carnival.
Part trickster, part surrogate child, part witness, Tama the magpie is the star of this story. Though what he says aloud to humans is often nonsensical (and hilarious), the tale he tells us weaves a disturbingly human sense. The Axeman's Carnival is Catherine Chidgey at her finest—comic, profound, poetic and true.
“A writer of formidable resources, a deft stylist possessed of uncanny imaginative acuity.”—The Guardian

Catherine Chidgey's novels have been published to international acclaim. Her first, In a Fishbone Church, won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Her second, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in The New York Times Book Review and a Best Book in the LA Times. Her novel Remote Sympathy (Europa, 2021) was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her novel Pet (Europa, 2023) was a New York Times Editors' Choice and a New Yorker and Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Pet is also long-listed for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award and the Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham Book Awards, New Zealand's most prestigious literary award, which Chidgey has won twice, for The Wish Child and The Axeman's Carnival. She lives in Ngaruawahia and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato.