--- product_id: 4679173 title: "The Bone People: Booker Prize Winner (A Novel)" price: "3587 som" currency: KGS in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.kg/products/4679173-the-bone-people-booker-prize-winner-a-novel store_origin: KG region: Kyrgyzstan --- # The Bone People: Booker Prize Winner (A Novel) **Price:** 3587 som **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Bone People: Booker Prize Winner (A Novel) - **How much does it cost?** 3587 som with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.kg](https://www.desertcart.kg/products/4679173-the-bone-people-booker-prize-winner-a-novel) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description The powerful, visionary, Booker Award–winning novel about the complicated relationships between three outcasts of mixed European and Maori heritage “This book is just amazingly, wondrously great.” —Alice Walker In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes: part Maori, part European, asexual and aromantic, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor—a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon’s feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where indigenous and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge. Winner of both a Booker Prize and Pegasus Prize for Literature, The Bone People is a work of unfettered wordplay and mesmerizing emotional complexity. Review: New Zealand aborigines in brilliant focus - I chose to read this novel because it received international awards when published in 1984, because it rated a 4.06 in goodreads.com--a very high score--and because I'd never read a work of fiction about New Zealand's aboriginal people. The story is narrated in first person by a woman who appears white but has some aboriginal blood, an artist who deeply associates with native traditions, and we first meet her living alone in a tower she designed and built herself with friends in a spiral form sacred to aborigines: the chambered nautilus so fascinating for all of us, and so often repeated throughout nature. She lives alone; something in her has broken, and she finds herself unable to paint or draw at all. She's been disconnected from her family as a deliberate point of will for some time, but the point has proven a psychic hara-kiri from which she suffers daily. One day she sees a boy in her window, a window higher than any boy should be. Gradually she comes to know him, even though she fairly despises children. This boy cannot talk. His complexion is fair and his hair, white blond, falls below his shoulders. He appears to be about seven years old physically but has the bearing or spirit, the indescribable something, of an old man. Eventually, she meets the man this boy knows as father, a full aborigine--so he can't be the boy's natural father. Like many disaffected peoples who suffer diaspora and discrimination, the man is struggling in life, financially and spiritually. He yearns for ancient traditions even while deliberately estranging himself from them. He drinks too much beer. But the artist and the man share a connection through the boy. Over time, they begin to act essentially as a family, although the artist is clear from the beginning they can never have a sexual relationship. She doesn't need or want sex. Catastrophe forces her to face visceral horrors that break them up in every conceivable way. Then reality and science begin to interweave with an alternate, mystic reality. The future and the past begin to coalesce, rising separately then intermingling, like smoke from different, nearby fires. Life progresses from one home to another as the characters and their story grow, leaving one home for the next, and the one after that, as the entire tale begins to form the familiar construct of a chambered nautilus, in which the animal inside accretes section by section as it grows and expands. I loved this story first for its tough, sophisticated, and modern intellectual assessments. I loved it for its grittiness. Then I hated its grittiness but was intrigued by the shift into mysticism. Finally, I was inspired. Where the spoken language is aboriginal, please be sure to refer to the glossary at the back of the book for the translation. I didn't realize there was a page-by-page translation until quite late, and I found it worthwhile to go back and read again with better understanding. Perhaps for this reason there is no Kindle version of the book. This novel is for folks who understand that all who wander are not lost. It is for seasoned readers eager to leap into a willing suspension of disbelief. For well-reasoned people capable of feeling their souls expand when they give up the need to decipher. Review: Provocative and Well Done - If you had problems with Joyce's Ulysses or Finnegan, this book will present a similar challenge, though more readable once you get used to the flow. Hulme is a brilliant, creative writer with a strong sense of narrative and the importance of detail presented with the sensibility and craftsmanship of a poet. Once you catch the drift of each character having an inner and an outer voice, as well as the usual good and bad selves at war within each of us, it becomes easier. Hulme is a spontaneous writer, but mostly careful in her use of punctuation to give you guidance to these voices. It will take reading the whole book to even begin to see the way Keri Hulme gathers, merges, and presents Maori and Celtic spirituality as simply another expression of all human condition. As a reader, I found myself questioning what was real, what was dream, what was afterlife, and how these various states are part of everything we do every day. It was interesting, beautiful, thought and debate provoking, a classic in my sense of the word, which means it is one of the books I intend to reread at least two more times before I depart this world --- if I ever do based on my reading of The Bone People. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #88,464 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #600 in Magical Realism #2,690 in Classic Literature & Fiction #5,374 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.3 out of 5 stars 565 Reviews | ## Images ![The Bone People: Booker Prize Winner (A Novel) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71OKGxApJhL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ New Zealand aborigines in brilliant focus *by K***T on February 9, 2013* I chose to read this novel because it received international awards when published in 1984, because it rated a 4.06 in goodreads.com--a very high score--and because I'd never read a work of fiction about New Zealand's aboriginal people. The story is narrated in first person by a woman who appears white but has some aboriginal blood, an artist who deeply associates with native traditions, and we first meet her living alone in a tower she designed and built herself with friends in a spiral form sacred to aborigines: the chambered nautilus so fascinating for all of us, and so often repeated throughout nature. She lives alone; something in her has broken, and she finds herself unable to paint or draw at all. She's been disconnected from her family as a deliberate point of will for some time, but the point has proven a psychic hara-kiri from which she suffers daily. One day she sees a boy in her window, a window higher than any boy should be. Gradually she comes to know him, even though she fairly despises children. This boy cannot talk. His complexion is fair and his hair, white blond, falls below his shoulders. He appears to be about seven years old physically but has the bearing or spirit, the indescribable something, of an old man. Eventually, she meets the man this boy knows as father, a full aborigine--so he can't be the boy's natural father. Like many disaffected peoples who suffer diaspora and discrimination, the man is struggling in life, financially and spiritually. He yearns for ancient traditions even while deliberately estranging himself from them. He drinks too much beer. But the artist and the man share a connection through the boy. Over time, they begin to act essentially as a family, although the artist is clear from the beginning they can never have a sexual relationship. She doesn't need or want sex. Catastrophe forces her to face visceral horrors that break them up in every conceivable way. Then reality and science begin to interweave with an alternate, mystic reality. The future and the past begin to coalesce, rising separately then intermingling, like smoke from different, nearby fires. Life progresses from one home to another as the characters and their story grow, leaving one home for the next, and the one after that, as the entire tale begins to form the familiar construct of a chambered nautilus, in which the animal inside accretes section by section as it grows and expands. I loved this story first for its tough, sophisticated, and modern intellectual assessments. I loved it for its grittiness. Then I hated its grittiness but was intrigued by the shift into mysticism. Finally, I was inspired. Where the spoken language is aboriginal, please be sure to refer to the glossary at the back of the book for the translation. I didn't realize there was a page-by-page translation until quite late, and I found it worthwhile to go back and read again with better understanding. Perhaps for this reason there is no Kindle version of the book. This novel is for folks who understand that all who wander are not lost. It is for seasoned readers eager to leap into a willing suspension of disbelief. For well-reasoned people capable of feeling their souls expand when they give up the need to decipher. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Provocative and Well Done *by T***L on June 8, 2014* If you had problems with Joyce's Ulysses or Finnegan, this book will present a similar challenge, though more readable once you get used to the flow. Hulme is a brilliant, creative writer with a strong sense of narrative and the importance of detail presented with the sensibility and craftsmanship of a poet. Once you catch the drift of each character having an inner and an outer voice, as well as the usual good and bad selves at war within each of us, it becomes easier. Hulme is a spontaneous writer, but mostly careful in her use of punctuation to give you guidance to these voices. It will take reading the whole book to even begin to see the way Keri Hulme gathers, merges, and presents Maori and Celtic spirituality as simply another expression of all human condition. As a reader, I found myself questioning what was real, what was dream, what was afterlife, and how these various states are part of everything we do every day. It was interesting, beautiful, thought and debate provoking, a classic in my sense of the word, which means it is one of the books I intend to reread at least two more times before I depart this world --- if I ever do based on my reading of The Bone People. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Didn’t finish reading *by S***N on March 18, 2026* Interesting --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.kg/products/4679173-the-bone-people-booker-prize-winner-a-novel](https://www.desertcart.kg/products/4679173-the-bone-people-booker-prize-winner-a-novel) --- *Product available on Desertcart Kyrgyzstan* *Store origin: KG* *Last updated: 2026-05-27*