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Now a major motion picture written and directed by Christine Jeffs, featuring Elizabeth Banks.
Elizabeth Taylor is a surgeon at a city hospital, a gifted, driven and rare woman excelling in a male-dominated culture. One day, while operating on a young woman in a critical condition, something goes gravely wrong. A Mistake is a compelling story of human fallibility, and the dangerous hunger for black and white answers in a world of exponential complication and nuance.
‘A masterful dissection of truth and fallibility, hubris and high-minded sexism, in the form of a literary thriller’ — 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
‘A masterpiece which feels more like a body than a book – the life pumps and glugs and flexes inside its pages’ —Pip Adam
‘Razor sharp and compelling’ —Kiran Dass
‘Precisely crafted, nuanced, riveting’ —NZ Herald
‘Great modern New Zealand writing’ —Metro
‘It’s smart, it’s beautifully descriptive, the writing is sharp and often very funny’ —Nine to Noon, RNZ
‘His novel will linger with you long after you have finished the last page.’ —The Spinoff
Carl Shuker is a former editor at the British Medical Journal and currently manager of scientific publications at Te Tāhū Hauora Health Quality and Safety Commission. He is the author of six novels – The Method Actors (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005), winner of the Prize in Modern Letters in 2006; The Lazy Boys (Counterpoint & Penguin, 2006); Three Novellas for a Novel (2008; Mansfield Road Press, 2011), Anti Lebanon (Counterpoint, 2013), A Mistake (Te Herenga Waka University Press & Counterpoint, 2019), which has been adapted for film, and The Royal Free (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2024 & Counterpoint, 2025). He lives in Wellington with his wife Anna Smaill and their two children.
Cover: Keely O'Shannessy
