The Raupo Dictionary of Modern Maori P M Ryan Raupo, $60.00, ISBN 9780143567899 Every household and office in Aotearoa New Zealand will have times when they need an easy-to-use Maori dictionary. As more te reo words and phrases drift into…
The Ship of Dreams: Masculinity in Contemporary Pakeha and Maori Fiction of Aotearoa/New Zealand Alistair Fox Otago University Press, $45.00, ISBN 9781877372544 In this academic but engaging study of masculinity in contemporary New Zealand fiction, Alistair Fox of the University…
Look This Way: New Zealand Writers on New Zealand Artists Sally Blundell (ed) Auckland University Press, $44.99, ISBN 9781869403713 Art and letters have always had a close working relationship in New Zealand. Our cultural landscape is pock-marked with painter-poets, jacks-of-all-trades…
Languages of New Zealand ed Allan Bell, Ray Harlow and Donna Starks Victoria University Press, $49.95, ISBN 0864734905 When I returned to New Zealand in 1989 after a quarter-century in Europe, I was naturally curious about how European languages fared…
Books in Maori: An Annotated Bibliography, 1815-1900/ Nga Tanga Reo Maori: Nga Kohikohinga Me Ona Whakamarama compiled in the Alexander Turnbull Library by Phil Parkinson and Penny Griffith Reed, $120, ISBN 079000951X New Zealand has traditionally lacked “bibliodensity”. This term…
The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary ed Tony Deverson and Graeme Kennedy Oxford University Press, $130, ISBN 0195584511 Lexicographers are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the publication, on 15 April 1755, of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, the book that made their profession…
Mihipeka: Call of an Elder Karanga a te kuia Mihi Edwards Steele Roberts, $29.95, ISBN 1877228222 The Tribes of Muriwhenua: Their Origins and Stories Dorothy Urlich Cloher (Maori translation by Merimeri Penfold) Auckland University Press, $29.95, ISBN 1869402693 Rere atu,…
Nga Pepeha a nga Tipuna: The Sayings of the Ancestors ed Hirini Moko Mead and Neil Grove Victoria University Press, $59.95, ISBN 0864733992 Maori sayings are “ready bits of loftiness and sonority”, to use George Steiner’s apt characterisation of formulaic expression.…
A Dictionary of Modern New Zealand Slang ed Harry Orsman Oxford University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0 19 558408 2 Harry Orsman achieved semi-divine status among New Zealand scholars with the publication of his highly-acclaimed Dictionary of New Zealand English. But I…