New Zealand Portraits Richard Wolfe Penguin Books, $80.00, ISBN 9780670071777 The Power of Portraiture: Representing Leadership in New Zealand from 1840 to the Present Erin Griffey (with contributions from Brad Jackson and Paul Tapsell) Gus Fisher Gallery and David Ling,…
Heaphy Iain Sharp Auckland University Press, $64.99, ISBN 9781869404215 The one-name title for this book confidently assumes this is someone we all know. After all, there can be only one Heaphy – Charles – because in the history of our…
Chinese Opera Ian Wedde Victoria University Press, $30.00, ISBN 9780864735850 When a story by Ian Wedde called “Chinese Opera” was published in Sport 2, readers were informed that he expected to “finish Chinese Opera, his fourth novel, in 1989.” Nineteen…
Whose High Country? A History of the South Island High Country of New Zealand Roberta McIntyre Penguin Books, $45.00, ISBN 97801430084125 At the risk of irretrievably mixing one’s metaphors, it is dairy farmers who are today on the sheep’s back.…
The Love School: Personal Essays Elizabeth Knox Victoria University Press, $33.00, ISBN 9780864735928 Paremata, the childhood novella which followed her debut novel After Z-Hour, was my own first encounter with Elizabeth Knox’s writing. The copy she gave me is inscribed…
God’s Messenger: J F Riemenschneider and Racial Conflict in 19th Century New Zealand Peter Oettli Huia, $55.00, ISBN 9781869693201 The lives of missionaries in 19th century New Zealand have tended to end up being documented in two forms. The first…
A Word in Season: Reflections on Spirituality, Faith and Ethics Richard Randerson Matai House, $19.50, ISBN 9780473136543 The Anglican Church in New Zealand, like the other major denominations, is split between its liberals and conservatives. This division is over how…
White Silence: Grahame Sydney’s Antarctica Grahame Sydney Viking, $115.00, ISBN 9780670072538 How does the sustained gaze of the landscape painter, obsessively re-imagining the sun-scorched expanses of Central Otago in a million meticulous brushstrokes, adjust to the mechanical snap of a…