Stories from the Diaspora
“I write to give voice to those who are otherwise lost or forgotten completely in Pacific literature: young girls and women.” Pasifika Press in New Zealand snapped up Sia Figiel’s where we once…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Basic Instinct gives Alpha Male brilliant bittersweet edge
The Times gives William Brandt’s collection of short stories, Alpha Male, lavish praise: “Surreal and sometimes downright weird, every tale is strong in its own right – a rare thing in any book of…
Looking Down: Fleur Adcock reaps poetic insight from the fringe
“Strangers are good for us, they help us see ourselves in unfamiliar ways. They take slightly different routes across our wearisomely footslogged home turf.” poetry is acute, intelligent, fastidious, sceptical, often disturbingly funny….
Barbara Anderson’s
“Any fan of sharp, poised social comedy, driven by immaculately droll prose, should investigate the New Zealand writer Barbara Anderson”.
Going to work on a memoir
NZ-edged Fay Weldon has signed a reputed £250,000 deal with publishers Harper Collins to write her memoirs, The Word, the Flesh and the She-Devil, a frank account of life, love, religion, psychoanalysis and the…
Female Guru
Fay Weldon and why we love those wise big women Maddening, sexy, inconsistent, irascible, solipsistic, profound, perplexing and provocative … and we love her. New Zealand-raised Fay Weldon joins the female-guru big-time along with…
Talk the walk: From a Maori grave in Crete to dithering dons at Oxford
Times review: “CK Stead’s eigth novel Talking about O’Dwyer is an inticate interrogation of the past … The sweep of Stead’s narrative pays dividends: there’s almost a wistful nostalgia, a sense that hanging onto…
The seduction of sand: TimeOut falls for Long, Hot Summer
“Long Hot Summer is a joy to read. Someone stops breathing in the final scene and the reader holds their breath as well. Like the rest of this cleverly patterned novel, it…
CK Stead explores the dynamic of the network
Time Out reviews CK Stead’s Talking About O’Dwyer, a “cracking history lesson-cum-psychological profile” that takes in Oxford Dons, Maori makutu (curse) and the effects of distance and time: “As is the way even now…
New Zealand Scholar Suggests Sceptical Slant on Sikh Story
Kiwi scholar Hew Mcleod puts claims made in Patwant Singh’s The Sikhs to the test of historical veracity – a task that has made him persona non grata with many members of the world’s…
Get it right mate – Theroux undone by Stead detective work
“This week the London Review of Books prints a long investigation by the poet CK Stead into a lunch party at Naipaul’s house attended by Theroux and a New Zealand couple Stead happens to…
“When all at once I saw a crowd”
Fleur Adcock gives poetic tribute to bard of the Lakes On the 150th Anniversary of William Wordsworth’s death, New Zealand-born poet Fleur Adcock has been chosen to unveil a plaque amongst the Easter daffodils…
Long Hot Summer puts the heat on readers
Kiwi Barbara Anderson’s latest novel gets praise in Times review, “a fine and sharp intelligence infuses Anderson’s characters and dialogue … Long Hot Summer demands attention from the reader, but it is worth it”.
The truth about bed: Fleur Adcock: Poems 1960-2000
“This very welcome collection of her verse confirms her status as arguably the most distinctive writer to have come out of New Zealand since Katherine Mansfield.”
Film Fatale: Chris Kraus
“Yet by affirming the “weakness” of her under- appreciated spiritual heroes, Kraus may have found an idiot-proof formula for this book to work whether it works or not.” Village Voice book review of Kraus’s…
“Hi-ho hi-ho, it’s Off to Work We Go …” Fay Weldon and the New Ergonarchy
New Zealand raised Fay Weldon takes time-out to ponder the future, “We could have the leisure society if we wanted it. But Samuel Smiles won; our lives are ruled by a work ethic and…
A sting in the tale
“When the New York Times says of your second novel that it “constructs a sturdy web of silken prose”, you might reasonably conclude that, as a novelist, you have arrived. When into the bargain,…
“Fresh Talent” Chad Taylor sends sophisticated shivers in Shirker
“With a tight and observant style, Taylor has weaved an engaging tale reminiscent of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy and with peripheral detail as obsessive as Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. He may touch upon…
One for the connoisseurs: Kiwi crime writer weaves a seductive web of existential anomie
New Zealand crime-fiction writer Chad Taylor makes a big impact on Guardian reviewer Maxim Jakubowski, “Shirker: a fascinating and obsessive novel from New Zealand with shades of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy…” …
Nabokov’s Pale Fire Still Smoulders
38 years later, the mystery continues to intrigue… Auckland University’s Professor Brian Boyd attempts to solve the enigma.
“I Love Dick”
Interview with Kiwi writer and avant-garde filmmaker Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick (the spare-no-prisoners tell-all that scandalised the Soho Intelligentsia) talks about anorexia, romance, and faking it.
New Zealand writer nominated for Commonwealth Writer’s Prize
Kapka Kassabova, regional winner for best first book in Commonwealth Writer’s Prize to be decided in April.
