Monty Soutar on Kāwai - his bestselling novel about pre-colonial Māori life

To engage young people accustomed to visual storytelling, historian Monty Soutar wrote Kāwai: For Such a Time as This as if it were a movie.

To engage young people accustomed to visual storytelling, historian Monty Soutar wrote Kāwai: For Such a Time as This as if it were a movie.

In this 2023 Auckland Writers Festival event, he discusses the book with Stacey Morrison (Te Arawa, Ngāi Tahu).

Listen to the conversation

A historian with deep knowledge of Māori history (and an ONZM for services to Māori and historical research), Dr Monty Soutar had puzzled over how to communicate his knowledge of subjects like the Māori Battalion and the New Zealand Pioneer Battalion to today's non-book-reading digital generation.

"I thought, well, they watch these screens all the time. Perhaps moving pictures are where I've got to get to if I'm really going to educate them about our past.

"When you read this book, Kāwai, truly it's like watching a movie. So I wrote it with that in mind. Somebody told me, if you can see each scene like you would in a theatre, then you're probably getting there."

"So that was my intention - to write it for young people, to write it like you'd be watching a movie. I didn't realise that by doing that I'd capture everybody."

During his conversation with Stacey Morrison at the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Soutar reveals the inspiration that Alex Haley's 1976 novel Roots provided and how he sold the family home to support himself while writing Kāwai.

Kāwai - the first volume in a planned trilogy - draws on Soutar's lifetime of research into the whakapapa and oral traditions of his own ancestors, beginning with the birth of Kai-tanga near Ruatoria.

He talks with Stacey Morrison (Te Arawa, Ngāi Tahu) in this highlight recorded in May of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.

About the speaker

Monty Soutar

Dr. Monty Soutar (Ngati Porou, Ngati Awa, Ngai Tai ki Tamaki, Ngati Kahungunu) is a member of the Waitangi Tribunal. He has worked as a teacher, soldier, university lecturer, museum director and Senior Historian for the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. His best-selling novel Kāwai: For Such a Time as This is the first in a trilogy and was shortlisted for the 2023 Ockham NZ Book Awards.

This session is broadcast thanks to the generous help of the Auckland Writers Festival held in May 2023

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details