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Literary contradictions, Alistair Fox

Striding Both Worlds: Witi Ihimaera and New Zealand’s Literary Traditions
Melissa Kennedy
Rodopi
ISBN 9789042033573

Katherine Mansfield and the (Post)colonial
Janet Wilson, Gerri Kimber and Delia da Sousa Correa (eds)
Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 9780748669097

In Striding Both Worlds, Melissa Kennedy has written one of the most substantial and insightful books published in the field of New Zealand literature in recent years. Apart from the light it sheds on the works of Witi Ihimaera, its importance resides in the challenge it mounts to the conventional, accepted reading of Māori literature in New Zealand. Whereas most critics during the past 30 years have approached this literature from a “culture-centred position” derived from postcolonial theory, Kennedy reads from a “text-centred position”, and places Ihimaera’s work in the broader context of Western cultural references, rather than construing it simply in terms of the politics of Māori nationalism, as almost all previous commentators have done. Her study also benefits from being informed by a wider range of critical and theoretical perspectives, including those of European scholars, than is usually the case.

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Posted in Literature, Review

Only the lonely, Timothy G Jones

The Lonely and the Alone: The Poetics of Isolation in New Zealand Fiction Doreen D’Cruz and John C Ross Rodopi, €85.00, ISBN 9789042034747 Loneliness holds a special place in New Zealand literature. If there is a single image that casts

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Posted in Literature, Non-fiction, Review

Taking high tea, Tim Jones

Reading Pakeha? Fiction and Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand  Christina Stachurski Rodopi, $77.50, ISBN 9789042026445 It was E M Forster who told us that study is only a serious form of gossip. I sometimes think the study of literature is

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Avoiding the cookie-cutter, Jennifer Lawn

Manifold Utopia: The Novels of Janet Frame  Marc Delrez Rodopi, $59.95 approx, ISBN 904201508X The appearance of the term “manifold” in the titles of two recent books on Janet Frame’s fiction suggests a current fascination with the multiple modes of

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Non-fiction
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