And the winner is Literary prizes are, of course, a good thing, and only the most curmudgeonly of spoilsports would want to abolish them. In a profession with few career markers, prizes like the Montana New Zealand Book Awards…
The Life of Brian: Masculinities, Sexualities and Health in New Zealand ed Heather Worth, Anna Paris and Louisa Allen University of Otago Press, $39.95, ISBN 1877276251 Worlds in Collision: The Gay Debate in New Zealand 1960-1986 Laurie Guy Victoria University…
Imperial Vistas Family Fictions Kendrick Smithyman Auckland University Press, $24.95, ISBN 186940274X Last Poems Kendrick Smithyman The Holloway Press, $65, ISBN 095823132X It’s an interesting parlour game to speculate how New Zealand’s literary history might have changed had Kendrick Smithyman…
The Denniston Rose Jenny Pattrick Black Swan, $26.95, ISBN 1869415612 This highly readable historical novel has already had a big thumbs-up from readers, and it’s not hard to understand why. It’s a darkly engaging story that almost constitutes a new…
Te Ara Ki Te Tiriti: The Path to the Treaty of Waitangi Paul Moon David Ling, $29.95, ISBN 0908990839 The Treaty of Waitangi often appears to have sprung forth, fully formed, from William Hobson’s pen on 6 February 1840. Many…
Barbed Wire Between Us: A story of love and war Derek Round Random House, $29.95, ISBN 1869415248 Last of the Whalers: Charlie Heberley’s Story Heather Heberley Cape Catley, $29.95, ISBN 0908561903 In Search of Elisa Marchetti: A Writer’s Search for…
An Affair of the Heart: A Celebration of Frank Sargeson’s Centenary ed Graeme Lay and Stephen Stratford Cape Catley, $49.99, ISBN 0908561938 O Jerusalem – James K Baxter: An Intimate Memoir Mike Minehan Hazard Press, $24.95, ISBN 1877270385 Two icons…
Horace at Kapiti, Roger Robinson
Early in the second of the “Four Letters in Verse” that make up Alistair Te Ariki Campbell’s Poets in Our Youth, the poet is recalling for Harry Orsman how as a boarder at Weir House, I found myself in the…
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