The Axeman’s Carnival

Everywhere, the birds, but above them all and louder, the magpies. We are here and this is our tree, and we're staying, and you need to leave and now.

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.

"The Axeman's Carnival is remarkable, brilliant, a classic in the making."

' - Rachael King

"The Axeman's Carnival is a compulsive read and flat-out brilliant."

' - Elizabeth Knox

'"One of our very best novelists knocks it out of the park."' - New Zealand Herald (Book of the Year)


"Chidgey's writing is masterful, and the underlying sense of dread as the story unfolds is shot through with humour and humanity. The Axeman's Carnival is unique: poetic, profound and a powerfully compelling read from start to finish."

' - Judges' comments, Ockham NZ Book Awards 2023

Catherine Chidgey is an award-winning and bestselling New Zealand novelist and short-story writer. Her first novel, In a Fishbone Church, won the Betty Trask Award. Golden Deeds was Time Out's book of the year, a Best Book in the LA Times Book Review and a Notable Book in the New York Times Book Review. Her novel Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and her most recent novel, The Axeman's Carnival, was the winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2023 Ockham NZ Book Awards.

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