Walking to Africa tops the Nielsen BookScan

Walking to Africa tops the Nielsen BookScan bestselling NZ fiction list a week after its launch

Award-winning New Zealand author, Jessica Le Bas's poetry collection, Walking to Africa, was announced as the number one best selling New Zealand book of fiction a week after its launch on 9 October.

Booksellers NZ, which lists the weekly bestsellers lists from Nielsen’s weekly BookScan has Walking to Africa listed above four other New Zealand books by authors Kate De Goldi, Maurice Gee, Elizabeth Knox and Tania Roxborogh.

Sam Elworthy, Auckland University Press’s Director (and publishers of Jessica’s book) says, that seeing a collection of new poetry at the top of the bestseller charts “a great indicator of New Zealand’s cultural vitality”.

“Jessica Le Bas’s Walking to Africa is the most moving book I have read in a long time and it is wonderful to see it getting the wide readership it deserves.”

The story (told in poetry) is through a mother’s eyes as she follows her young daughter’s descent into severe depression and through the strange, new and sometimes frightening world of mental health care.

Readers meet specialists A through F, other kids, friends who want to help, an angel/nurse and the Ghostman – alongside therapies and cures, strategies and rites. They are shown glimpses of the realities, the fragility, the unknowing and unknown.

Jessica says, “Walking to Africa emerged as a way of exploring the strange mental-health-care planet our family had arrived on.

“Mental illness was not something I knew about. Depression can be a horrible experience, and for a child not responding to medication it is an unimaginable place, for everyone who loves them.”

“Lost, I wanted directions, answers, remedies and ways of understanding what was going on. I wanted a map that showed the terrain – the way in and the way out.”

Ultimately, Jessica says there are a myriad ways of managing and living with mental illness, but “it is a complex field that can feel scary for families with no experience of mental illness in their lives.”

Judi Clements, Mental Health Foundation Chief Executive, says Jessica’s collection is a compelling read and evokes a range of reactions including sadness, smiles and anger.

“Anyone who reads Walking to Africa will gain valuable insights and a greater understanding around experiences of mental distress, which - we hope in turn - will reduce stigma and discrimination.”

Author Jessica Le Bas, has been writing and publishing short fiction and poetry for many years. She has won several awards for her poetry including the 2008 NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for the Best First Book of Poetry for her first collection of poems, Incognito (Auckland University Press, 2007).

Auckland University Press published Walking to Africa and a 2007 NZ Mental Health Media Grant funded the writing of the collection. To read more go to:
http://web.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/aup/book/2009/lebas-walking-to-africacfm and http://www.booksellers.co.nz/book-news/nzs-bestsellers/nielsen-weekly-bestsellers-list-171009

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