Новозеландская писательница Чиндиджи: жизнь и творчество

New Zealand writer

Chidgey was born in Auckland and grew up in the Hutt Valley. At Victoria University of Wellington she completed a BSc in Psychology, and a BA in German Language and Literature. In 1993 she was awarded a German Academic Exchange Service scholarship to study at the Freie Universität Berlin. She returned to Victoria University in 1997 to complete an MA in Creative Writing under Bill Manhire. as of 2021 she lives in Hamilton with her husband and daughter. Chidgey has explained that the 13 year gap between her third and fourth novels was due to infertility issues keeping her from writing; she and her husband finally had their daughter in 2015. Louis de Bernières called the novel "warm, subtle and evocative. You will be thinking about it long after you have finished reading". The Sunday Express called it "a wonderful, gripping read. Human relations and needs are explored in all their complexity. Chidgey proves herself to be among that elite group of authors who possess a true grasp of the patterns of life". The Independent on Sunday said the novel "ensnares you, creeps up and snaffles you with its small, tense concerns. I could not stop thinking about it. I could not put it down I finished Golden Deeds with that delicious and rare feeling: that I was in the presence of a proper, grown up storyteller who cared not a toss for gimmicks or manifestoes, but dared instead to put her case with real authorial power and verve". The Transformation, Chidgey's third novel, was published in 2003, and that year she was named New Zealand's best novelist under forty by The New Zealand Listener. The book tells the story of a shadowy Parisian wig maker who flees to Tampa, Florida in the 1890s. The Sunday Times said that "Chidgey spins a horror story which, miraculously avoiding easy sensationalism, is both troubling and haunting", and the New Zealand Herald said it was "her third and best so far Chidgey could tackle any subject and produce something wonderful from it. She has that gift of the imagination that finds metaphor, contiguity and paradox wherever she looks, and a seemingly innate feel for structuring events, times and historical detail to make one whole, satisfying narrative out of a myriad unexpected parts". The Sunday Express remarked, "This really is a novel to get lost in A highly original read, as beautiful as it is terrifying, which manages to be riotously chilling without ever going over the top".

Her fourth novel, The Wish Child, set in Nazi Germany, was published in New Zealand in 2016 and was a bestseller, winning the 2017 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards—the country's richest literary prize. Radio New Zealand called it "a brilliant, brilliant novel a masterpiece". The New Zealand Herald found it "meticulously crafted and superbly written provocative, haunting, intelligent and lyrical breath taking It will stay with you long after you finish the final page". The Sunday Star Times commented "Right from the first sentences I was caught up in the exquisite lure of the writing: musical, clear, lovingly tended. Nothing seems forced I loved this book with its subterranean mysteries and spiky issues. I love the way, at this critical point in the world, when fundamental human values are violated, The Wish Child reminds us with grace and understated wisdom of a need to strive for universal good. I ached as I read. This novel is unmissable". It was published in the UK in July 2017 by Chatto & Windus, with The Times calling it "a remarkable book with a stunningly original twist". In October 2018 Counterpoint published it in the US as a lead Fall title. Her fifth book was released in November 2017. A 'found' novel, The Beat of the Pendulum was written during 2016, with Chidgey drawing on newspaper articles, Facebook posts, emails, radio broadcasts, books, street signs and conversations to create an entry for every day of the year. Radio New Zealand selected it as a Best Book of 2017, calling it "Important in terms of its form as much as its content sensationally clever writing an enormously skilled writer who totally gets the craft". It was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and was published in the UK by Lightning Books in 2019. Chidgey's sixth book, Remote Sympathy, was published in 2020, and like The Wish Child is set in Nazi Germany. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. It was a Sunday Times Book of the Month, and was described by The Guardian as "immersive, profound and beautifully plotted". Publishers Weekly praised Chidgey's exploration of the intersecting stories of former Nazis and Holocaust survivors, concluding: "With its multiple registers and complex view of humanity, this marks a vital turn in Holocaust literature". It was one of New Zealand's top ten best selling novels in 2021, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Dublin Literary Award, and was longlisted for the 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction. In 2022 it was named by The Guardian as one of the best books of the year. In October 2022, her seventh novel, The Axeman's Carnival, was published. Set in Central Otago, the novel tells the story of the relationship of a farming couple and is narrated by a magpie called Tama. Chidgey drew from her husband's family's farming experiences in writing the novel. Rachael King, reviewing the book for Newsroom, described it as "remarkable, brilliant, a classic in the making", with Tama's voice providing "dark poetry, dramatic irony, startling wisdom and trickster delights". and won New Zealand's top book award, the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. In 2023, her eighth novel, Pet, a thriller about the relationship between a 12 year old girl and her schoolteacher, was published in New Zealand, the UK and the United States. Ruth Franklin in The New York Times called it a "lingering, haunting book", and "a landmark in the small but potent canon of contemporary novels about unusual girls reckoning with themselves and the world around them".