Kawai

About the Author

‘The themes which arise in this book will be recognised by indigenous people the world over. In many ways the colonial experience for them has been similar regardless of who the colonising power was.’
— Monty Soutar

Dr Monty Soutar (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa, Ngai Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngāti Kahungunu) has worked as a Senior Historian for the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, as Director of the Tairāwhiti Museum in Gisborne and as the World War One Historian in Residence at Auckland War Memorial Museum. In 2015, he was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori and historical research. He continues to serve on the Waitangi Tribunal.

Dr Soutar is the author of Whitiki Whiti Whiti E! Māori in the First World War, Ngā Tama Toa: The Price of Citizenship: C Company 28 (Māori) Battalion 1939–1945 and Kāwai: For Such a Time as This, the first title in the Kāwai series, which was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. In 2021, Soutar was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Fellowship to write the Kāwai series. Soutar lives in Tairāwhiti with his wife and youngest daughter.