September 12, 2025 • 11 mins
Elizabeth Knox is one of the country’s most esteemed authors, known best for her novels ‘Vintner’s Luck’ and ‘The Absolute Book’.
She’s also a dab hand at essay collections and young adult stories, though it had been over a decade since she last wrote for a younger audience.
That changed with the release of ‘Kings of this World’, a young adult novel focused on the sole survivor of a cult massacre.
The book is a long time coming, Knox having written it over the span of several years.
“I had the bad habit of writing several books at the same time,” she told Newstalk ZB’s Jack Tame.
“I developed the strategy when I had a lot of distractions in my life, and I decided to distract myself, so I had some power over that.”
“And then I came out of it and thought I'd solved the problem and could always keep doing that, but no,” she told Tame.
“Bad habit.”
Writing young adult fiction is not dissimilar to writing for adults, but there is one central principle Knox abides by when writing for younger audiences.
“You can’t deprive the readers of hope,” she explained.
“With that in mind, I was able to write a, you know, pretty scary thriller, and I don’t think that young readers need to be defended from suspense and fear and things like that.”
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at Me.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Elizabeth Knox is one of New Zealand's most celebrated authors.
She's known, of course for the likes of Vintner's Luck
and The Absolute Book, but she also writes essay collections
and young adult stories. But would you get this? It
has been twelve years since Elizabeth last wrote a book
for young people. That was, at least until this week,
when her brand new novel Kings of This World was released.
(00:35):
Kings of This World tells the story of a young
protagonist who's the sole survivor of a cult massacre, and
Elizabeth is with us this morning. Cald A, Good morning, Ciara,
it is great to be speaking with you. Congratulations on
Kings of This World. This is your first novel for
young adults and I think like eleven or twelve years
So what made you return to that audience.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, I was returning, but over a very long horizon
because it took me a long time to write this book,
because I had the bad habit of writing several books
at the same time.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Is that what they recommend Elizabeth, several books at one
at the same time.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I developed the strategy when I had a lot of
distractions in my life and I decided to distract myself
so I had some power over that, and then I
came out of it and thought I'd solve the problem
and I could always keep doing that. But no bad habit.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah. Yeah, So that means that it took a wee
while or slightly longer than it might have if you
were just focusing on Kings of.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yes, yeah, not slightly.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yes. Well, I'm sure that young readers will be absolutely
delighted that you've reached this point. Can you tell us
a little bit about Kings of This World?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Kings of this World is the protagonist is Vex Magdalene,
and she, at eight years old, was the sole survivor
of a cult massacre, and she has been raised in
institutions by experts and then by Foster family, and it's
(02:07):
only in her last year of high school that she's
let out. Now, the thing about the massacre is that
it's the only massacre of people who are pushed to death.
And in this country, they had a kind of an
endemic thing going on where one percent of the population
is able to tell other people what to do, and
(02:28):
they'll do it. But of course that's that's a spectrum.
So some people can when the when the maitre da
is an attentive, get a good table at a restaurant,
and other people are able to do crowd control. So
Vex's father was up at the crowd control end of
(02:48):
the spectrum, and he also survived the massacre and then disappeared.
And she gets to go to school in her last
year and the school that she chooses to go to
is the preferred school of the percentage the people.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Who have Yeah, right, So where does your interest in
cults stem from?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Oh, this is a hard one who's not interested in cults?
True watching watching things. Yeah, things evolve on television news
when I was a child, and also kind of been
being a child and teenager in the sixties and seventies
(03:31):
and sort of seeing the alternative lifestyle thing and the
evangelistic idea that you could take your group of people
off and make a better world in a small place,
which was often well intentioned. And I always think of
the very historic New Zealand ones that were pacifists during
(03:55):
World War Two. Those there weren't cults per se it
and communities. So yeah, so just I was always interested.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I suppose there are always that that there there are
a really good sort of portal into different components in
human psychology, aren't they. You know, whether it's the kind
of the nature of the ways in which you know,
groups interact or members of a group interact with one another,
other ways in which people can be led in certain directions,
like there are all sorts of interesting parts of the
(04:27):
human psyche that can be unpacked when you when you
you know, look at it through the frame of a cult.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yes, in the sort of ideology. So I was inventing
an ideology that wasn't just in the end the backstory,
but still playing out in the world and then impacting
on Vexa's continued life and the life of her for
friends who end up kidnapped with her.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So do you write with young adult readers in mind?
Or does the book find its own audience as the
story forms.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Both at the same time, Like, I have the idea,
and then I think that would work as a young
adult book, and I start to write it accordingly, and
I have a few I have one now, I have
one central principle for young adult as opposed to adult
fiction is and that is that you can't deprive the
readers of hope. So with that in mind, I was
(05:24):
able to write a you know, a pretty scary thriller.
And I don't think that young readers need to be
defended from suspense and and you know, fear and things
like that obviously, So you know, my kidnapping plays out
like a kidnapping, except the clever young people managed to
(05:52):
get out, they managed to survive, and it's it was
interesting me to try to work it out in a
practical sense that the people who don't have pee, the
two people in the room who don't have any or
you know, no one thinks they have any, well they
(06:12):
don't and they are just just either very strong or
very very self possessed and cunning. So yeah, the kind
of the weakest member of the team, the swatty girl,
is the one that kind of pulls things off.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And yeah, well, why is the hope components so important
to you for young readers?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Well, I mean I just think that that that kind
of moment where you go from being a child who
feels no sense that they're ever going to be made
responsible for the way the world's organized, and then through
the years where you suddenly realize that you have an inheritance,
and it isn't you know, isn't necessarily the beautiful house.
(06:59):
It's the falling down house. And I think they've got
a lot on their plates during those years, and so
if you going to expose them to art, you, I mean,
it's just kind and encouraging to show them that you know,
you can have agency and yeah, take response, take responsibility,
(07:23):
and and make your own decisions and not be punished
for that.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah. So that's interesting, right, because you're you're hoping that
readers will get something out of it. I suppose you're
hoping that they'll get a message out of it as
well as simply being entertained or being consumed by a story.
You're really hoping that young readers in particular, and in
a way that maybe you don't feel the same compulsion
with older readers. Is that is that fair?
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Well? I think that whatever the view of the world
is in a novel always rises out of the author's
feelings for living in the world, and so it's not
so much a message as just just kind of the
color of people's thinking a little bit, so that they're
(08:10):
able to kind of see things in or feel things
a bit differently, and with this one, I was interested
in the fact that the young people ended up not
trusting any of their elders around them or thinking they
were functionally useless one way or another, because they were
(08:32):
so sidelined after the kidnapping, after the investigation, and so
they make a series of decisions, good and bad, to
try and work out what's happened and do something about it.
And yeah, they and it's good for them that they
do that. They come out bigger and stronger and closer
(08:54):
together to each other.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah right, I mean that actually, that makes total sense really,
And so you've just been on a writer's retreat, right, Elizabeth?
How was that? Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yes, it's the gig. So twice a year I take
workshops at a writer's retreat, and the workshop component is
kind of playing a murder mystery and it's always hilarious.
You know. The people who come into it who haven't
(09:25):
done it before are slightly dubious. But I have a
lot of repeat people coming back, so that's my kind
of like skeleton of people with faith in the process.
So that happens, and then I also have kind of
time alone with each attendee to talk about the project
that they're working on. And I love that partly because
(09:48):
I come away feeling incredibly useful, and boy, I think
feeling useful is about the best you can feel. And
also because there's always these fantastic cooks cook every meal.
So yeah, there was one fabulous cook and now there's
another fabulous cook and it's vegan and gluten free, and
(10:13):
it's just this incredibly tasty, really good for you food
that turns up at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And when
do you get that out of the day.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
You've sort of been nourished in every sense, both literally
and a nutritional sense, but also in an intellectual sense
as well.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Yes, yes, completely nourishing experience. So yeah, that's yeah. And
that's that's run by Kerrie Sunderland and Nelson right around
New Zealand is her little business.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Oh how amazing. How does the murder mystery work?
Speaker 3 (10:46):
The murder mystery? Oh yeah, the murder mystery. I change
it up every year. So it used to be a
murder in a little New Zealand cold suburban could des
arc and then it became a murder in a eighteen
thirty's English country house. And I've just done a boys'
school in nineteen sixty three, and all sorts of things happen,
(11:09):
but there are patterns, and you know that's they're hilarious
and slightly disgraceful. And that year after year the murder
victim always turns out to have been sleeping with everyone.
There's a lot of hilarity. Yes, it does work.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
It does sound like fun. Yeah, it sounds amazing. Hey,
thank you so much. Congratulations and we are so pleased
that despite a bumpy ride, but despite a slightly elongated process,
that things of things have ultimately worked out. Congratulations on
Kings of this World.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
That is Elizabeth Knox. All the dehouse for Kings of
this World are up on the News Talks website
Speaker 1 (11:51):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, Listen live
to News Talks He'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at Me.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Elizabeth Knox is one of New Zealand's most celebrated authors.
She's known, of course for the likes of Vintner's Luck
and The Absolute Book, but she also writes essay collections
and young adult stories. But would you get this? It
has been twelve years since Elizabeth last wrote a book
for young people. That was, at least until this week,
when her brand new novel Kings of This World was released.
(00:35):
Kings of This World tells the story of a young
protagonist who's the sole survivor of a cult massacre, and
Elizabeth is with us this morning. Cald A, Good morning, Ciara,
it is great to be speaking with you. Congratulations on
Kings of This World. This is your first novel for
young adults and I think like eleven or twelve years
So what made you return to that audience.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, I was returning, but over a very long horizon
because it took me a long time to write this book,
because I had the bad habit of writing several books
at the same time.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Is that what they recommend Elizabeth, several books at one
at the same time.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I developed the strategy when I had a lot of
distractions in my life and I decided to distract myself
so I had some power over that, and then I
came out of it and thought I'd solve the problem
and I could always keep doing that. But no bad habit.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah. Yeah, So that means that it took a wee
while or slightly longer than it might have if you
were just focusing on Kings of.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yes, yeah, not slightly.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yes. Well, I'm sure that young readers will be absolutely
delighted that you've reached this point. Can you tell us
a little bit about Kings of This World?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Kings of this World is the protagonist is Vex Magdalene,
and she, at eight years old, was the sole survivor
of a cult massacre, and she has been raised in
institutions by experts and then by Foster family, and it's
(02:07):
only in her last year of high school that she's
let out. Now, the thing about the massacre is that
it's the only massacre of people who are pushed to death.
And in this country, they had a kind of an
endemic thing going on where one percent of the population
is able to tell other people what to do, and
(02:28):
they'll do it. But of course that's that's a spectrum.
So some people can when the when the maitre da
is an attentive, get a good table at a restaurant,
and other people are able to do crowd control. So
Vex's father was up at the crowd control end of
(02:48):
the spectrum, and he also survived the massacre and then disappeared.
And she gets to go to school in her last
year and the school that she chooses to go to
is the preferred school of the percentage the people.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Who have Yeah, right, So where does your interest in
cults stem from?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Oh, this is a hard one who's not interested in cults?
True watching watching things. Yeah, things evolve on television news
when I was a child, and also kind of been
being a child and teenager in the sixties and seventies
(03:31):
and sort of seeing the alternative lifestyle thing and the
evangelistic idea that you could take your group of people
off and make a better world in a small place,
which was often well intentioned. And I always think of
the very historic New Zealand ones that were pacifists during
(03:55):
World War Two. Those there weren't cults per se it
and communities. So yeah, so just I was always interested.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I suppose there are always that that there there are
a really good sort of portal into different components in
human psychology, aren't they. You know, whether it's the kind
of the nature of the ways in which you know,
groups interact or members of a group interact with one another,
other ways in which people can be led in certain directions,
like there are all sorts of interesting parts of the
(04:27):
human psyche that can be unpacked when you when you
you know, look at it through the frame of a cult.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yes, in the sort of ideology. So I was inventing
an ideology that wasn't just in the end the backstory,
but still playing out in the world and then impacting
on Vexa's continued life and the life of her for
friends who end up kidnapped with her.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So do you write with young adult readers in mind?
Or does the book find its own audience as the
story forms.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Both at the same time, Like, I have the idea,
and then I think that would work as a young
adult book, and I start to write it accordingly, and
I have a few I have one now, I have
one central principle for young adult as opposed to adult
fiction is and that is that you can't deprive the
readers of hope. So with that in mind, I was
(05:24):
able to write a you know, a pretty scary thriller.
And I don't think that young readers need to be
defended from suspense and and you know, fear and things
like that obviously, So you know, my kidnapping plays out
like a kidnapping, except the clever young people managed to
(05:52):
get out, they managed to survive, and it's it was
interesting me to try to work it out in a
practical sense that the people who don't have pee, the
two people in the room who don't have any or
you know, no one thinks they have any, well they
(06:12):
don't and they are just just either very strong or
very very self possessed and cunning. So yeah, the kind
of the weakest member of the team, the swatty girl,
is the one that kind of pulls things off.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And yeah, well, why is the hope components so important
to you for young readers?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Well, I mean I just think that that that kind
of moment where you go from being a child who
feels no sense that they're ever going to be made
responsible for the way the world's organized, and then through
the years where you suddenly realize that you have an inheritance,
and it isn't you know, isn't necessarily the beautiful house.
(06:59):
It's the falling down house. And I think they've got
a lot on their plates during those years, and so
if you going to expose them to art, you, I mean,
it's just kind and encouraging to show them that you know,
you can have agency and yeah, take response, take responsibility,
(07:23):
and and make your own decisions and not be punished
for that.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah. So that's interesting, right, because you're you're hoping that
readers will get something out of it. I suppose you're
hoping that they'll get a message out of it as
well as simply being entertained or being consumed by a story.
You're really hoping that young readers in particular, and in
a way that maybe you don't feel the same compulsion
with older readers. Is that is that fair?
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Well? I think that whatever the view of the world
is in a novel always rises out of the author's
feelings for living in the world, and so it's not
so much a message as just just kind of the
color of people's thinking a little bit, so that they're
(08:10):
able to kind of see things in or feel things
a bit differently, and with this one, I was interested
in the fact that the young people ended up not
trusting any of their elders around them or thinking they
were functionally useless one way or another, because they were
(08:32):
so sidelined after the kidnapping, after the investigation, and so
they make a series of decisions, good and bad, to
try and work out what's happened and do something about it.
And yeah, they and it's good for them that they
do that. They come out bigger and stronger and closer
(08:54):
together to each other.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah right, I mean that actually, that makes total sense really,
And so you've just been on a writer's retreat, right, Elizabeth?
How was that? Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yes, it's the gig. So twice a year I take
workshops at a writer's retreat, and the workshop component is
kind of playing a murder mystery and it's always hilarious.
You know. The people who come into it who haven't
(09:25):
done it before are slightly dubious. But I have a
lot of repeat people coming back, so that's my kind
of like skeleton of people with faith in the process.
So that happens, and then I also have kind of
time alone with each attendee to talk about the project
that they're working on. And I love that partly because
(09:48):
I come away feeling incredibly useful, and boy, I think
feeling useful is about the best you can feel. And
also because there's always these fantastic cooks cook every meal.
So yeah, there was one fabulous cook and now there's
another fabulous cook and it's vegan and gluten free, and
(10:13):
it's just this incredibly tasty, really good for you food
that turns up at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And when
do you get that out of the day.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
You've sort of been nourished in every sense, both literally
and a nutritional sense, but also in an intellectual sense
as well.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Yes, yes, completely nourishing experience. So yeah, that's yeah. And
that's that's run by Kerrie Sunderland and Nelson right around
New Zealand is her little business.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Oh how amazing. How does the murder mystery work?
Speaker 3 (10:46):
The murder mystery? Oh yeah, the murder mystery. I change
it up every year. So it used to be a
murder in a little New Zealand cold suburban could des
arc and then it became a murder in a eighteen
thirty's English country house. And I've just done a boys'
school in nineteen sixty three, and all sorts of things happen,
(11:09):
but there are patterns, and you know that's they're hilarious
and slightly disgraceful. And that year after year the murder
victim always turns out to have been sleeping with everyone.
There's a lot of hilarity. Yes, it does work.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
It does sound like fun. Yeah, it sounds amazing. Hey,
thank you so much. Congratulations and we are so pleased
that despite a bumpy ride, but despite a slightly elongated process,
that things of things have ultimately worked out. Congratulations on
Kings of this World.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
That is Elizabeth Knox. All the dehouse for Kings of
this World are up on the News Talks website
Speaker 1 (11:51):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, Listen live
to News Talks He'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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