The Bone People

The Bone People (1984) by Keri Hulme was the first New Zealand novel to receive the Booker Prize. It also earned a number of other awards, including the 1984 New Zealand Book Award and the Pegasus Award for Maori Literature. A native of Christchurch, Hulme grew up on the South Island. She comes from a large, diverse, multicultural family of English, Scottish, and Maori descent. After finishing high school, the writer began working as a tobacco picker, and she returned to this occupation after spending two years at university. She attempted writing full time but, despite family support, had to go back to tobacco picking and other odd jobs until 1978, when she became a writer-in-residence at the University of Otago, followed by another residency at the University of Canterbury in 1985. Hulme has published both poetry and prose, as well as nonfiction, occasionally under the pen name Kai Tainui.

Due to its modernist style and nonstandard spelling and word use, The Bone People was initially rejected by several established publishers on the grounds of being difficult to understand. It was finally taken on by a small independent publishing house, Spiral, founded by a feminist collective, among whose members was the well-known Maori leader, writer, and healthcare activist Irihapeti Ramsden.