Edge of the alphabet conjurer has cancer

SMH pays tribute to Janet Frame – “one of New Zealand’s most celebrated and enigmatic writers” – who recently revealed she is terminally ill with cancer. Frame’s biographer Michael King (Wrestling with the Angel) was quoted in the article: “There will be Janet the writer observing it all and being interested in it until the last possible moment … If you maintain that interest, it pushes the demons into the background.” He likened Frame’s stature in NZ to that of Sir Edmund Hillary: “The country will feel the same kind of bereavement when we no longer have them.”