The Bone People

The Bone People is a novel by the New Zealand writer Keri Hulme, published in 1984. Hulme worked on it for years and could not find a mainstream publisher willing to take it without heavy editing, so it was first issued by the small women's collective Spiral.

It is set on the coast of the South Island and follows three people who are isolated in different ways: Kerewin Holmes, a reclusive artist; Simon, a mute child who was found after a shipwreck; and Joe Gillayley, the boy's foster father. The three of them form a fragile relationship with one another.

Violence breaks the relationship apart, and the novel follows what is left afterwards, with Māori and Pākehā language, myth and custom mixed into the fabric of the story rather than set beside it. The book was the first New Zealand novel, and the first debut novel, to win the Booker Prize, and it has divided readers ever since between those who find it powerful and original and those who object to its violence and its style.