New Zealand Listener

New Zealand Listener is the country’s most respected general interest magazine, bringing you a wide variety of news, stories, columns, reviews, plus TV listings, every week.

Masthead

Many happy returns • With most Kiwis supporting a money-back scheme for empty drink containers, the government now needs to make it happen, says Sue Coutts.

Letters

Quips & Quotes

10 Quick Questions

Your parcel has been underdelivered • They make all these promises on the packaging, we wait years for the courier and don’t get what we’re expecting.

Playing the ID card

Frames of mind

Brewing fantasies

Dinner is cooked

All in the head • The off-the-scale pain that envelops migraine and cluster headache sufferers remains a medical mystery. But overseas, a new class of drugs is helping some to at least ward off attacks.

Please, shoot the messenger • In this extract from The Headache, Tom Zeller outlines his encounters with a drug billed as the first preventer for migraine and cluster attacks in 60 years.

Twist in the tale • In the first of two stories, Steve Braunias reports on the murder trial of a woman who killed her children and hid their bodies in suitcases.

Chanting whose hymn? • Ostensibly politically agnostic, reserve bank governors are anything but, and are forecast to lose that sheen in an era of economic nationalism.

Speak his mind • A new biography charts how the Dunedin punk who emerged as NZ’s answer to Johnny Rotten became a multimedia renaissance man.

Prime target • Traversing the first 39 tumultuous years in enigmatic writer Muriel Spark’s life, biographer Frances Wilson gives fresh life to her genius.

Short cuts

Frictions and fractures • The things that shape women’s lives, loves and causes make up the stories in this fiction collection.

Bestsellers

Naked ambition • A sharp political dramedy, a heady cocktail of fact and fiction and a story set in Tasmania’s early colonial days.

Poetry

Short cuts

Going viral • This debut novel vividly reveals the effects of being targeted on social media.

On the lateral elevator • As he brings his latest audio-visual project, Cinematographer, to local festivals, award-winning musician Anthonie Tonnon ponders everything from his early life to his guilty pleasures.

Book of the banned • The tracks that state radio deemed unfit for public consumption through the years has become its own series.

Americana, the brave • Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy’s solo triple album is morose, weird, and engrossing.

A friend in cheeses • French fromage-themed debut for director and star proves charming.

Old-school politics • Inspirational teacher tale is set against the dawning of the Spanish Civil War.

Off to the races • A politician-free panel show hopes to discuss racism with ordinary Kiwis.

TV Picks of the week

Tv Films • The big movies on TV this week

Saturday/rāhoroi October 11

Sunday/rātapu October 12

Monday/rāhina October 13

Tuesday/rātū October 14

Wednesday/rāapa October 15

Thursday/rāpare October 16

Friday/rāmere October 17

Radio October 11

Spirit of rebellion • The opera that affronted Stalin gets a makeover.

Steeped in it • Even a relaxing cuppa brings no respite from ubiquitous microplastics entering our blood stream.

Staple attraction • Persian-American cook Samin Nosrat shares her love of cooking with a few favourite ingredients.

Singular vision • Wine produced from a single vineyard can transport you to the very terroir.

Brainpipes • The effects of nasal congestion are not limited to poor sleep...