‘Owls Do Cry’ voted Great Kiwi Classic

Janet Frame’s 1957 debut novel Owls Do Cry has topped the second annual Great Kiwi Classic poll run by the New Zealand Book Council and Auckland Writers Festival. The initiative, first launched in 2014, sees readers vote for their favourite book by a New Zealand author. A final winner is then chosen by a panel. Frame’s novel, a set text for many New Zealand students, ‘recounts the story of the Withers family, gently exploring mental health, poverty and loneliness’. It has been in print for nearly 60 years and was republished in 2014 as part of the Text Classics series. The inaugural Great Kiwi Classic was Keri Hulme’s 1984 Booker Prize-winning novel The Bone People (Picador).

Category: In brief