The final novel from the acclaimed late New Zealand writer Kelly Ana Morey will be published in the UK this September.
Ordinary People Like Us follows five generations of Maori women across a century of profound social and cultural change, moving from the Far North and inner-city Auckland to London in the 1970s and 1990s.
Spanning the lives of Bird, Kaa, Annie, Lorna, Jen and Pax, the novel explores family, love, loss, inherited stories and the choices that shape lives across generations.
Morey, who was of Ngati Kuri, Te Rarawa, Te Aupouri and Pakeha descent, was an acclaimed novelist, poet, essayist and non-fiction writer. She died in September 25 aged 57 after a short illness. Her debut novel, Bloom, won the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction in 2004, while in 2025 she received the inaugural NZSA Janet Frame Literary Award.
Ordinary People Like Us is her sixth and final novel.
The book has already drawn praise from leading New Zealand writers, with Catherine Chidgey describing it as 'a remarkable novel', while Witi Ihimaera said: 'My God, what a book.'
Published by John Murray Press, Ordinary People Like Us will be released in the UK on 10 September 2026.