Poorhara (B format)

It is 178 years after colonisation . . . Erin can hear the whaanau whispering, and they won’t tell her why. She’s ditched school to help her aunty clean houses – even though she has a full-time job looking after all the moko. But no one cares, and soon she will be picked clean, like the bones in her maamaa’s bedroom. Star is home for the first time in years, and he’s worn the same clothes for days. Everything feels unfamiliar: the karakia, his nephews, the house that he grew up in. He’s too scared to tell his family that he’s bombing back at uni. And the past is an affliction, a gently rising tide. Together, the cousins escape. Free-wheeling across the countryside in a car without a warrant, they cast their net widely. Their family mythologies, heartaches and rifts will surface, and amidst them the glint of possibility: a return to the whenua where it all began. Set in the confines of a 1994 Daihatsu Mira, Poorhara is a journey of epic proportions – poignant, expansive and darkly funny. ‘Rahurahu’s book Poorhara blew me away.’ —Miriama Kamo, NZ Herald ‘A hilarious and heartbreaking debut’ —essa may ranapiri, inaugural winner of the Keri Hulme Award ‘This is a novel to get excited about, a compulsive, absorbing, cinematic work of beauty.’ —Amber French, North & South ‘Rahurahu takes what could otherwise be a heavy story told in a depressing world, and gives it the grace and love that it deserves.’ —Sam Brooks, Dramatic Pause Midden Rahurahu (Ngaati Rahurahu, Ngaati Tahu-Ngaati Whaoa) is a writer who was raised by taangata turi. They were a co-editor of Te Rito o te Harakeke, an anthology of Maaori voices for Ihumaatao. They have a Master's in Creative Writing from the IIML, where they won the Modern Letters Fiction Prize, and they were also shortlisted for the Michael Gifkins Prize. Poorhara won the Hubert Church Prize for Fiction at the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Cover design: Todd Atticus