‘Water will come and you think it will be soft. You think it will be smooth and find its way around your things: your houses and cars and furniture, your gardens and windows and hope. But water can be the foot of an elephant, the horns of a moose, a herd of buffalo running from a lion, water can be the kauri falling in the forest, a two-tonne truck, a whole stadium filled with 50,000 people, screaming . . . Water is life, and water can be death.’
Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become
neighbours in a coastal town in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Single parent Keri has her hands full with four-year-old Walty and teen Wairere, a strange and gifted child who is drawn to the waters of the indigenous wetlands. New to the street is Sera and her family, who are refugees from ecological devastation in Europe and living next door is Janet, an older white woman with an opinion about everything.
When Janet’s adult son Conor unexpectedly arrives home sporting a fresh buzzcut and a disturbing tattoo, no one suspects just how extreme the young man has become – no one except Wairere who can feel both the danger, and the swamp beneath their street, watching and waiting.
FINALIST OF THE OCKHAM NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS 2025
‘The Mires is about the monsters we’ve created and the power we have to stop them. A truly magnificent novel’ – Shankari Chandran, author of CHAI TIME AT CINNAMON GARDENS
‘The Mires is that rarest of creatures, a beautifully written, page turner. I couldn’t put it down. Charged with urgency and imagination, Makereti’s novel introduces us to a group of women whose stories are inseparably entwined with both one and other’s and that of the land. This is both a timely and timeless novel. It manages to strike a much-needed hopeful note whilst simultaneously sharing some devastating truths.’ – Jan Carson, author and writer
‘The Mires is a work of art. The impacts of colonisation, movement, and climate change cut to the bone in glittering prose and through characters kept close as neighbours. In The Mires, the environment speaks, culture transcends boundaries and the myriad ideas of home are bitterly defended. Only Tina Makereti could hold a reader in such tense tenderness’ – Laura Jean McKay, author of GUNFLOWER
‘An enchanting novel: poignant, earnest and lyrical, this story will settle in your bones’ – Maxine Beneba Clarke, author of THE HATE RACE
‘As both a writer and a refugee, this book resonates with my experiences, skilfully addressing the link between refugee lives, colonialism and climate change’ – Behrouz Boochani, author of NO FRIEND BUT THE MOUNTAINS
Tina Makereti is a New Zealander of Te Atiawa, Ngati Tuwharetoa, Ngati Rangatahi-Matakore and Pakeha descent. She writes novels, short fiction and creative non-fiction.
Her first novel, Where the Rekohu Bone Sings, has been described as a New Zealand classic, was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2016 and also won the 2014 Nga Kupu Ora Aotearoa Maori Book Award for Fiction. Her second novel, The Imaginary Lives of James Poneke, was longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction and the Dublin Literary Award.
The Mires, her third novel, was published by Ultimo Press in Australia and New Zealand and is publishing with HarperVia in the US and by Footnote Press in the UK.
