Catherine Chidgey The Axeman’s Carnival

In this darkly comic work of literary satire by New Zealand’s most acclaimed and best-selling novelist Tama, a talking magpie and social media influencer, is the sole witness to a marriage in freefall. Tama is just a helpless chick when he is rescued by Marnie. ‘If it keeps me awake,’ says Marnie’s husband Rob, a farmer in the middle of a years-long drought, ‘I’ll have to wring its neck.’ But with Tama come new possibilities for the couple’s future. Tama’s fame is growing, and with it, his earning potential. 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 is the star of this story. And although what he says to humans is often nonsensical (and hilarious), the tale he tells makes disturbingly perfect sense. The Axeman’s Carnival is Catherine Chidgey at her finest – comic, profound, poetic and true.