Chidgey, Catherine
Entry updated 26 May 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1970- ) New Zealand academic, translator and author, active from before 2000, moderately prolific in various genres. The Axeman's Carnival (2022), which is Fantasy, is narrated by a magpie. Of sf interest is The Book of Guilt (2025), an Alternate History whose Jonbar Point is the election in 1939 of a woman prime minister of the UK, which enables the assassination of Adolf Hitler in 1943, and a negotiated peace treaty. A less devastated Europe forges ahead, particularly in the Biological sciences, but power corrupts. By 1970 in England, specially bred children are raised in enclaves (see Keep), only slowly learning that their fate is effectively to be Organlegged by the state. A close resemblance to the premise of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005) is clearly intended to be conspicuous. [JC]
Catherine Chidgey
born Auckland, New Zealand: 8 April 1970
works (selected)
- The Axeman's Carnival (Wellington, New Zealand: Te Herenga Waka University, 2022) [binding unknown/]
- The Book of Guilt (Wellington, New Zealand: Te Herenga Waka University, 2025) [hb/]
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