F Victoria University Press: 2016 Catalogue DAD ART I C 2016 Fiction 3 T Poetry 9 I Non-fiction 19 O N 2015 Fiction 27 Poetry 32 March 2016 ISBN: 9781776560561 2016 Non-fiction 35 Paperback 138 x 210 mm; 232 pp. RRP: $30 How to order: Fiction Victoria University Press books are distributed by Upstart Distribution, represented by Archetype Book Agents, and are available from all good booksellers. It’s , now. Acoustic Engineer Michael Upstart Distribution Archetype Book Agents Stirling’s old life is gone. He’s on the dating scene, PO Box 302-749 17 Cascade Ave learning te reo Māori, living in an upmarket North Harbour Waiatarua apartment complex, and visiting his father who 0751 Auckland 0604 has dementia. Wearing his online dating disguise, Ph +64 9 814 9455, Fax +64 9 814 9453 Michael meets Chrissie, the widowed mother of Ph +64 9 280 3199, Fax +64 9 281 3090 [email protected] a young son. Then his beloved adult daughter [email protected] arrives from Auckland with a new attachment, an artist whose project will push them all towards key Other enquiries: moments of risk and revelation. Victoria University Press Dad Art is a vibrant, funny new work from the PO Box 600 leading chronicler of contemporary life in Aotearoa. Wellington Told with great verve, this novel is about the capacity +64 4 463 6580 for surprise and renewal. [email protected] ‘It adds to the list of likeable, though not quite Publisher: Publicist: Kirsten McDougall admirable characters with which Wilkins has charmed Editor: Ashleigh Young Administrator: Craig Gamble readers for two decades: competent, scrupulous about Editing and Production: Kyleigh Hodgson Editorial Intern: Holly Hunter their social and familial duties, but knocked off their perch into the uneasy condition of emotional outsiders.’ Cover design by Keely O’Shannessy. —John Sinclair, Metro Any resale prices or margins or conditions for sale set out or indicated herein are suggestions only. Other prices may be charged, and other conditions of sale may be imposed in relation to the goods to which the prices of margins or conditions of sale relate, without the risk of the issuer of this notice or the supplier of the goods applying sanctions of any kind. All recommended retail prices include GST. The publication dates listed in this catalogue are subject to change, and titles were necessarily limited due to space constraints. A full catalogue and backlist can be found on our website, vup.victoria.ac.nz. 3 F F I MYSTERIOUS MYSTERIES DELETED SCENES FOR LOVERS I C C T OF THE ARO VALLEY T I I O Danyl McLauchlan Tracey Slaughter O N N

June 2016 May 2016 2016 ISBN: 9781776560479 ISBN: 9781776560585 2016 Paperback Paperback 138 x 210 mm; 400 pp. 138 x 210 mm; 224 pp. RRP: $30 RRP: $30 Fiction Fiction

A returning hero. ‘The knowledge of everyone they’re about to hurt is A desolate valley. not an easy element to breathe in. They’re the lovers. A missing mathematician. You can blame them now, if you want to. That’s your A glamorous and beguiling council bureaucrat with choice: this is the director’s cut.’ a hidden past. Seventeen powerful stories of contemporary New A cryptic map leading to an impossible labyrinth. Zealand life from a writer whose penetrating gaze An ancient conspiracy; an ancient evil. reveals the full experience of her characters’ lives— A housing development without proper planning tragic, comic, rich. permission. All leading to the most mysterious mystery of all. Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley is a dark and forbidding new comic farce by the author of Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley.

‘Aro Comic Noir just may become a literary cult of its own.’ —, NZ Herald

‘Tracey Slaughter brings a breathtaking lyricism to the short story; the language is at once baroque and raw, pulsing with risk and edgy desire. These exquisite pieces don’t just get under the skin; they smash and kick at the heart.’ — 4 5 F I THE WISH CHILD An excerpt from THE WISH CHILD C T I O Catherine Chidgey N Mama had been saving sugar and flour for weeks, putting it Mama was wrong. Erich wept for the fish, lying on the sofa and November 2016 aside into special tins that Erich was not allowed to touch. burying his face in the tasselled green cushions where everything 2016 ISBN: 978177650622 Paperback It was their duty, she said, to have a normal Christmas, was soft and cool and dark, and he could not hear Mama saying 138 x 210 mm; 320 pp. even without Papa, even though when the wind blew in the that German boys should be brave; that German boys should RRP: $30 right direction they could smell the smoke from the bombs know some things had to die. He could feel his grandmother Fiction that had fallen on Leipzig. The house filled with the aroma stroking his back, and where she stroked, fins appeared, and of hazelnuts and cinnamon, cloves and almonds, and Mama he swam into the soft darkness, the tasselled weeds parting This astonishing new novel from the bestselling author tucked her hair under her headscarf and hurried about the for a moment to let him through, then closing behind him. of In a Fishbone Church will be one of the literary kitchen as if there was an emergency, kneading sweet brown That night at dinner Mama lit the candles and sat in Papa’s events of 2016. The story of two German families dough and cutting it into fir trees and stars, pinching pieces chair. She placed the fish at the centre of the table, its fins and caught up in the Second World War, The Wish Child of sugary white mixture into crescent moons. The shapes were tail as brittle as sycamore wings. Erich could see the slit along its is both a love letter of sorts to Berlin, and a terrifying the shapes of a still night in the forest, and Erich wished he belly, and the filling of onions and parsley leaking onto the dish portrayal of the way ordinary Germans were drawn could slip through his bedroom window when Mama was that had belonged to Mama’s mama, who was dead. The little into the Nazi dream. asleep and go to the woods beyond the farm and stand there in wooden angels hung on the tree; angels in sleighs, angels playing the fragrant dark, looking up through the black branches—but trumpets, angels doing things that people do, and this was not Catherine’s first novel, In a Fishbone Church, was a the forest was not safe any more. It hid runaways and traitors, at all strange, because angels were dead people, after all, and New Zealand bestseller and won the Hubert Church all manner of enemies, bad shadows waiting in every hollow. why should they not remember how to play trumpets and ride Award for Best First Book of Fiction in the Montana In the tub the carp was growing. When they needed to in sleighs? Erich wanted to ask Oma if angels had memories but NZ Book Awards, the South East Asia and Pacific bathe Erich caught it in a bucket and set it aside and it Mama was peeling back the skin and cutting up the fish, cutting Region Prize in the Commonwealth Writers Prize for waited, curled like a question mark, until he poured it back. a slice for Oma and for Tante Uschi and for Erich and for Best First Novel, a Betty Trask prize for a first book At night he could hear it splashing, leaping from the water, herself, and telling him to say grace. He did not want to thank (UK) and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her and each morning he had to dry the bathroom floor so that God or anybody else for the thing that lay before him, and so he second novel, Golden Deeds, was runner-up for the nobody would slip and break their neck. The fish was calm said the words with his eyes open and his head unbowed, and Deutz Medal for Fiction and was published under the then, barely moving, but it came to him when he beckoned when he had finished Mama said, Amen, just as she did when title The Strength of the Sun by Henry Holt in the US, it, nudging at his fingers as they fluttered beneath the water. she finished her prayers to the head, and then she began to eat, where it was a New York Times ‘Notable Book of the And in the mornings, too, Erich saw Mama saying her plucking the fine bones from the flesh so that she would not Year’. prayers to the bronze head with the blank eyes. It glinted choke. Erich pushed his fork into a piece of the carp and raised just as the carp glinted, although it was not a living thing; it to his mouth, and his mother smiled and the candle-flames no, it was not alive, not alive, but its eyes watched without shook and the shadows climbed the walls and the snow fell, iris or pupil, and you could not tell where they were looking. and the hollow head watched like a father, and Erich knew then On Christmas Eve Mama killed the carp. She took a that the hand holding the fork was not his own, and nor was hammer, the hammer Papa used for fixing things, and she the mouth receiving the food; it was a different boy who placed killed it, and then she cut it open, and it was not clean on the warm morsel on his tongue, a different boy who chewed the inside, even though it had been in the bath for days, and and swallowed, chewed and swallowed, and asked for more. 6 F I C SPORT 44: NEW ZEALAND TRANSIT OF VENUS T NEW WRITING 2016 I O Edited by Fergus Barrowman with Kirsten McDougall Hinemoana Baker, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Glenn N and Ashleigh Young Colquhoun, Uwe Kolbe, Brigitte Oleschinski, Published by Fergus Barrowman 2016 March 2016 February 2016 ISBN: 9770133789004-44 ISBN: 9780864739797 Paperback Paperback 148 x 210 mm; 276 pp. 148 x 210 mm; 144 pp. RRP: $30 RRP: $30 Fiction, poetry and non-fiction Poetry

Packed with new essays, poetry and fiction from 56 The Transit of Venus has fascinated astronomers for leading and new New Zealand writers, Sport 44 is an centuries. In 1769 Captain James Cook sailed to P essential overview of current New Zealand writing. the Pacific with a group of scientists to observe the P O Transit in Tahiti—but Cook had also received secret O E Essays: Nick Bollinger, Helena Wiśniewska Brow, orders to voyage onwards in search of the fabled E T Emma Gilkison, Elizabeth & Sara Knox, Catherine ‘Unknown Southern Continent’. It was on this T R Robertson, John Summers, Giovanni Tiso, Chris Tse voyage that he made at Tolaga Bay, met the R Y Fiction: Pip Adam, Francis Cooke, , local Māori and initiated the first positive encounter Y Breton Dukes, Craig Gamble, Emma Hislop, Kirsten between Europe and Aotearoa/New Zealand. 2016 McDougall, Frances Mountier, Damien Wilkins Nearly 250 years later three German poets flew 2016 Poetry: Johanna Aitchison, Philip Armstrong, to the Pacific to join with three New Zealand Jane Arthur, Tusiata Avia, Airini Beautrais, Jenny poets in observing another Transit of Venus. They Bornholdt, Victoria Broome, James Brown, Rachel came together at a gathering hosted by the Tolaga Bush, Geoff Cochrane, Lynn Davidson, Lynley Bay Uawa community that used the focus of this Edmeades, Trevor Hayes, Helen Heath, Alexandra historically significant event to consider how science Hollis, Erik Kennedy, Liang Yujing, Anna Livesey, might make a difference to New Zealand’s future. , Maria McMillan, Hannah Mettner, In poems presented in both English and German, N Bill Nelson, Gregory O’Brien, Claire Orchard, Nina these six remarkable voices present a fresh series of O Powles, Harry Ricketts, Frances Samuel, Kerrin P. encounters between Europe and New Zealand and N Sharpe, C.K. Stead, Marty Smith, Oscar Upperton, record a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The next Tim Upperton, Catherine Vidler, , Transit of Venus will not be seen until 2117. F Sarah Natalie Webster, Sarah Wilson, Louise I Wrightson, Ashleigh Young C T I O N 8 9 2016 COLD WATER CURE AND SO IT IS

Claire Orchard Vincent O’Sullivan

March 2016 March 2016 ISBN: 9781776560578 ISBN: 9781776560592 Paperback Paperback 165 x 210 mm; 112 pp. 138 x 210 mm; 96 pp. RRP: $25 RRP: $25 Poetry Poetry

At the heart of Claire Orchard’s first poetry collection Hot on the heels of Being Here, his capacious Selected is Charles Darwin, during the intense period in Poems which was chosen by the NZ Listener as one P which he was working on his controversial theory of the poetry highlights of 2015, comes this dazzling P O of evolution, On the Origin of Species. His world as collection of 75 new poems. O E traced in his notebooks and letters—his daily habits, E T his relationships, his health—is drawn out in full I so like the man who wrote, ‘I believe T R imaginative colour and echoed in unexpected ways in in a daisy because I can see it,’ R Y the poet’s own world 200 years later. and could not have given as you might say Y We also find here depictions of childhood, a metropolitan’s toss, should he be thought parenthood, odd characters and split-second a bit of a simpleton even, as though, 2016 2016 decisions. This witty, compassionate book speaks as though a man who says that of the beauty and strangeness of all living things, with the appalling confidence of knowing including, and perhaps especially, humankind. he has said so much about belief, and clarity, and the point of endurance, knows as well there is smoking rubble and the shards of fractured stars that five minutes back were windows, that daisies for half the children you have heard of are as likely to be in that lost box of words they will never have use for, ever need to say, ‘Weren’t those the ones we nearly picked?’

—‘I So Like the Man Who Wrote’

10 11 FITS & STARTS MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING

Andrew Johnston Bill Nelson

March 2016 April 2016 ISBN: 978176560615 ISBN: 9781776560639 Paperback Paperback 138 x 210 mm; 88 pp. 138 x 210 mm; 64 pp. RRP: $25 RRP: $25 Poetry Poetry

1 The dogs will find you first. fitnoun . Also fytte. Even under the snow A section of a poem or song; a canto. obsolete exc. they can smell the fear and sweat P hist. OE. and polypropylene socks. P

O 2 O E start noun . Your grandfather can smell it too. E T A sudden burst of energy or activity; an outburst of He pulls you out by the scruff of your neck. T R emotion, madness, etc.; a flight of humour. Also, R Y a sudden broken utterance or sound. Now rare or You are strapped into a pair of skis. Y obsolete. l16. (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) Edward Scissorfeet. Disturbed, 2016 eating a sandwich with metal poles 2016 Andrew Johnston’s mesmerising new collection dangling from your arms. weaves together fragments of dream, myth, memory and experience. With humour and melancholy, these —‘Arrest’ poems draw upon the random treasures of the radio alphabet and the ancient contradictions of the Old In his debut poetry collection Bill Nelson steps into Testament. At their centre, the mythical figure of John Coltrane’s body and wears it around. He is Echo roams through an imaginary landscape. Hope, a turtle disappearing into the sea. He plumbs the love, health and voice disappear and reappear, rescued depths of business jargon. He takes singing lessons in by faith in poetry’s power to invent its own kind of Berhampore. He takes his grandfather roller skating. sense. Funny, strange and arresting, these poems test our understanding of understanding.

‘Our messy human natures are accounted for here with care and precision. Clever and surprising, but also warm and down to earth, these poems are great company.’ —Kate Camp 12 13 FALE AITU | SPIRIT HOUSE THOUGHT HORSES

Tusiata Avia Rachel Bush

May 2016 April 2016 ISBN: 9711776560646 ISBN: 9781776560721 Paperback Paperback 138 x 210 mm; 112 pp. 210 x 148 mm; 68 pp. RRP: $25 RRP: $25 Poetry Poetry

Ask the god to open the house of your chest Rachel Bush’s distinctive, haunting poems wide enough that your enemy may enter acknowledge the consolations and undoings of P thought. In Thought Horses we encounter a speaker P O ask aitu: lie down with me who—as she is stepping outside, or googling an O E my heart is open as a window old friend, or lying awake too early—is sometimes E T lifted up, and sometimes overtaken by thought. A T R ask aitu: walk with me beautifully wrought new collection by the author of R The Hungry Woman The Unfortunate Singer Y my heart is younger than the sun (1997), Y (2002) and Nice Pretty Things (2011). — an excerpt from ‘House’ 2016 2016 ‘It’s nice to know that I can still stumble across New In Tusiata Avia’s new collection Fale Aitu | Spirit Zealand writers who I’ve never read and fall in love House, the voices of the living and dead, the past and with their writing.’ the present are woven together in poems that are —Sarah Jane Barnett both confessional and confrontational. Speaking from Samoa, Christchurch, Gaza, and New York—Avia’s fearless voice combines mythic with the everyday stories, never shying away from moments of pain nor strange wonder.

14 15 HERA LINDSAY BIRD CHILDREN ARE THE ORGASM OF THE WORLD

Hera Lindsay Bird by Hera Lindsay Bird

July 2016 ISBN: 9781776560714 Paperback 165 x 210 mm; 112 pp. RRP: $25 Poetry

this impressive debut has established Hera Lindsay This morning on the bus there was a woman carrying a bag with inspirational sayings and Bird as a good girl……with many beneficial thoughts positive affirmations which I was reading because I’m a fan of inspirational sayings and positive P and feelings…… affirmations. I also like clothing that gives you advice. What’s kinder than the glittered baseball O with themes as varied as snow and tears, the poems cap of a stranger telling you what to strive for? It’s like living in a world of endless therapists. The E in this collection shine with the fantastic cream of inspirational bag of the woman on the bus said a bunch of stuff like ‘live in the moment’ and T who she is…………….juxtaposing many classical ‘remember to breathe,’ but it also said ‘children are the orgasm of the world.’ Are children the R and modern breezes orgasm of the world like orgasms are the orgasms of sex? Are children the orgasm of anything? Y Bird turns her prescient eye on love and loss, and Children are the orgasm of the world like hovercraft are the orgasm of the future or silence what emerges is like a helicopter in fog……or a is the orgasm of the telephone, or shit is the orgasm of the lasagne. You could even say sheep bejewelled Christmas sleigh, gliding triumphantly are the orgasm of lonely pastures, which are the orgasm of modern farming practices which 2016 through the contemporary aesthetic desert…… are the orgasm of the industrial revolution. And then I thought why not? I like comparing this is at once an intelligent and compelling fantasy stuff to other stuff too. Like sometimes when we’re having sex and you look like a helicopter of tenderness….. in a low-budget movie, disappearing behind a cloud to explode. Or an athlete winning a this is the book for you…………………………… prestigious international sporting tournament at the exact same moment he discovers his wife has just been kidnapped. For the most part, orgasms are the orgasms of the world. Like slam dunking a glass basketball. Or executing a perfect dive into a swimming pool full of oh my ‘I think there’s a pretty strong case which suggests Hera god. Or travelling into the past to forgive yourself and creating a time paradox so beautiful it Lindsay Bird is like the most exciting newish poet in forces all of human history to reboot, stranding you naked on some distant and rocky outcrop, NZ.’ looking up at the sunset from a world so new looking up hasn’t even been invented yet. —Steve Braunias

‘Hi, dear, have to say how much we enjoyed, if right word, the Hate poem. Really made us think, loved the line about the ancient cannon.’ —a text message from Ashleigh Young’s mum

16 RABBIT RABBIT A BEAUTIFUL HESITATION

Kerrin P. Sharpe Fiona Pardington, edited by Kriselle Baker and Aaron Lister July 2016 March 2016 ISBN: 9781776560653 ISBN: 9781776560547 Paperback Hardback 148 x 210 mm; 70 pp. 245 x 330 mm, over 150 colour photographs RRP: $25 RRP: $70 Poetry Non-fiction, photography

she gave him the lungs Fiona Pardington considers each of her photographs to open the hands to be ‘a sovereign world’, offering the viewer an P of fields and walk uneasy, dreamlike experience. She uses the phrase ‘a O beautiful hesitation’ to describe photography’s power E through an alphabet to arrest time and to alter our relationship with T of rabbits what a photograph both places under our gaze and R withholds from it. Y —‘the train kept my son breathing’ Fiona Pardington: A Beautiful Hesitation showcases the work of one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most 2016 In her third collection, Kerrin P. Sharpe writes about important and celebrated photographers. Covering trespass and return, the homelessness of flight, and thirty years, it is the most comprehensive publication anatomies both human and object. Her poems of her work to date. take the form of oblique, sometimes tragic, always The book includes newly commissioned essays, powerful vignettes. These are poems that are deeply a substantial interview and an archive section restless in time and place. including earlier significant texts. Designed by the artist’s brother, Neil Pardington, this book includes ‘Kerrin P. Sharpe’s poems make me think of migratory more than 150 images. Many early photographs are birds. It’s as if they have just settled very briefly on the published here for the first time. N page after long journeys from far-off places—from O Europe, from Antarctica, from other centuries.’ N —Bill Manhire F I C T I O N 18 19 2016 PACIFIC WAYS: GOVERNMENT AND CHINA IN THE PACIFIC: POLITICS IN THE PACIFIC, 2ND ED. THE VIEW FROM OCEANIA

Edited by Stephen Levine Edited by Michael Powles

April 2016 March 2016 ISBN: 9781776560684 ISBN: 9781776560530 Paperback Paperback 148 x 210 mm; 398 pp. 170 x 240 mm; 284 pp. RRP: $40 RRP: $40 Non-fiction, politics Non-fiction, politics

The Pacific region contains a highly diverse and China and the Pacific: The View from Oceania is based fascinating range of countries, from the large nations on a conference held at the National University of of Australia and Papua New Guinea to the tiny, Samoa in Apia from 25 to 27 February 2015. China’s isolated islands of Pitcairn and Rapa Nui. However, new role as an important diplomatic and economic the literature on the politics of the Pacific Islands partner of the island countries of the Pacific has remains much slimmer than for other regions. attracted increasing attention, and some controversy, The first edition of Pacific Ways helped to redress in recent years. The unique priority of this conference this balance by providing the kind of information in Samoa was to give full opportunity for both Pacific for the Pacific that is readily available for nations voices to be heard on the subject and for productive in other parts of the globe: their politics, historical engagement and discussion between Pacific island background and colonial experience, constitutional participants and those from China. frameworks, political institutions, political parties, Samoa’s Prime Minister, China’s Ambassador elections and electoral systems, and problems to Samoa, and leading politicians and academics and prospects. It covered all regions—Polynesia, from all around the Pacific islands region made Melanesia and Micronesia—and all countries, contributions which are included in this book. irrespective of their size or political status. The second edition updates the information on all of N the countries and territories in the first edition, and N O adds two more: West Papua, administered as part of O N Indonesia, and East Timor/Timor-Leste. N

F F I I C C T T I I O O N N 20 21 2016 2016 FUTUNA: LIFE OF A BUILDING NEW ZEALAND SOCIETY AT WAR 1914–1918

Edited by Gregory O’Brien and Nick Bevin Edited by Steven Loveridge

June 2016 July 2016 ISBN: 9781776560523 ISBN: 9781776560608 Hardback Paperback 230 x 230 mm; 160 pp. 152 x 232 mm; approx. RRP: $50 300pp. Non-fiction, history, illustrated RRP: $40 Non-fiction, history, illustrated

Since its grand opening in 1961, Wellington’s James Belich once argued that in New Zealand the Futuna Chapel—devised by architect John Scott and ‘grand themes of world history are often played artist Jim Allen—has held a singular place in New out more rapidly, more separately, and therefore Zealand’s cultural history. Futuna: Life of a Building more discernibly than elsewhere’. New Zealand in tells the remarkable story of the chapel’s inception 1914 was a leading liberal democracy with modern and construction, and its status beyond as well as infrastructure and institutions, high average living within the architectural world. The book also tells standards and a populist disposition, whose sense the vexed story of the chapel’s sale to a developer of national identity was developing alongside an in 2001 and its subsequent dereliction and, at the increasing orientation towards Britain. This attitude eleventh hour, rescue. Since then, the chapel has been was not universal, however, and despite New transformed from a place of Catholic worship to a Zealand’s astonishing commitment to the war, social non-denominational centre for spiritual, cultural and consent to the demands of mobilisation were neither artistic expression. With essays by Chris Cochran, unconditional nor uncontested. David Mitchell, Niall McLaughlin, Gregory O’Brien This book conveys some of the complexities of a and Nick Bevin and photographs by Paul McCredie small land in a world war, by examining individual and Gavin Woodward, this book takes us into the facets of New Zealand society. Its 18 investigations heart of one of the most dynamic and affecting of particular social institutions, associations and N human-made structures in Oceania. groups—including the rugby club, the pulpit, the N O union meeting, the voluntary association, civilian O N and military leadership, Māori, women, children, N German immigrants and pacifists—give us a richer, F more detailed understanding of how New Zealanders F I thought and acted during the First World War. I C C T T I I O O N N 22 23 2016 2016 MANSFIELD AND ME: A GRAPHIC MEMOIR

Sarah Laing

October 2016 ISBN: 9781776560691 Paperback 160 x 245 mm; 336 pp. RRP: $35 Graphic memoir

Katherine Mansfield is a literary giant in New Zealand—but she had to leave the country to become one. She wrote, ‘Oh to be a writer, a real writer.’ And a real writer she was, until she died at age 34 of tuberculosis. The only writer Virginia Woolf was jealous of, Mansfield hung out with the modernists, lost her brother in World War I, dabbled in Alistair Crowley’s druggy occult gatherings and spent her last days in a Fontainebleu commune with Olgivanna, Frank Lloyd Wright’s future wife. She was as famous for her letters and diaries as for her short stories. Sarah Laing wanted to be a real writer, too. A writer as famous as , but not as tortured. Mansfield and Mecharts her journey towards publication and parenthood against Mansfield’s dramatic story, set in London, Paris, New York and New Zealand. Part memoir, part biography, N part fantasy, it examines how our lives connect to O those of our personal heroes. N

F I C T I O N 24 2016 F WORK IN PROGRESS JAMES K. BAXTER: I C Subscribe to our email newsletter or visit our website, vup.victoria.ac.nz, for further announcements, COMPLETE PROSE T which will include the following: I James K. Baxter, edited by John Weir O N Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Poetry Aotearoa New Zealand August 2015 , Selected Poems ISBN: 9781776560370 2015 Edited by Ingrid Horrocks and Cherie Lacey Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Collected Poems Hardback, four volumes in a slipcase July 2016 , Dark Days in the Oxygen Café 152 x 232mm; 2662 pp. ISBN: 9781776560707 , Back with the Human Condition RRP: $200 Paperback, 224 pp. Brian Turner, new collection Non-fiction RRP: $40 James Brown, new collection This collection of personal essays, a first of its kind, re-imagines the idea of place for an emerging generation of readers and writers. It offers glimpses into where Complete Prose chronicles Baxter’s life and times, his we are now and how that feels, and opens up the range and kinds of stories we Non-fiction preferences and prejudices, his crises and turbulent can conceive of telling about living here. Contributors include Tony Ballantyne, occasions. Its contents are remarkable for their range, Sally Blundell, Alex Calder, Annabel Cooper, Tim Corballis, Martin Edmond, Erueti et al (eds), Aotearoa and Implementation of the UN Declaration Ingrid Horrocks, Lynn Jenner, Cherie Lacey, Tina Makereti, Harry Ricketts, Jack on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Theory and Practice coherence and passionate integrity. Ross, Alice Te Punga Somerville, Giovanni Tiso, , Lydia Wevers and Bernardine Vester, Southern Transformations: South Auckland Education This four-volume set contains over a million Ashleigh Young. Reform words, in the form of reviews, essays, lectures, journal Barbara Francis, You Don’t Travel in China at the Full Moon: Correspondence Labour: The New Zealand Labour Party 1916–2016 from China by Agnes Moncrieff of New Zealand, 1940–1945 articles, drafts and rough notes, meditations, fables, Erin Mercer, Telling the Real Story: Genre and stories, a short novel, interviews, letters to the editor, Peter Franks and Jim McAloon Ashleigh Young, Can You Tolerate This? (Essays) correspondence with friends and critics, and diary July 2016 Geoffrey Troughton and Stuart Lange (eds), Sacred Histories in Secular entries, covering Baxter’s entire career, from his first ISBN: 9781776560745 New Zealand Paperback , Helen Rickerby and Angelina Sbroma (eds), Truth and Beauty: draft of ‘Before Sunrise’ as a teenager in 1942 to his 240 x 170 mm, 320 pages approx., more than 100 illustrations $50 Verse Biography in Canada, Australia and New Zealand ‘Confession to the Lord Christ’ shortly before his Norman Meehan and Tony Whincup, Contemporary New Zealand death in 1972. Edited with scrupulous care by John Founded in July 1916, the Labour Party is New Zealand’s oldest political Improvising Musicians party, and has a proud progressive tradition that continues to this day. This Weir, Baxter’s friend and the foremost scholar of groundbreaking history tells the Party’s full story, including New Zealand’s his work, it also includes an extensive introduction, labour governments, periods in opposition, and times of upheaval and conflict. notes and references, a glossary of Māori words and Bats Plays (Polythene Pam, Truelove, Flybaby, Jism, The phrases, biographies of key people, an index and a Temptations of St Panic!) bibliography. & Rebecca Rodden December 2016 ‘We all know that Baxter is a dazzling phrasemaker, and ISBN: 9781776560738 on almost any page here we’re likely to be reminded.’ 138 x 210 mm; 320 pp. —NZ Books review $40

Marking the 30th anniversary of leading playwright Ken Duncum’s first professional production at Bats Theatre, this volume brings together the early plays, many written in collaboration with Rebecca Rodden, that forged his style. With an introduction and notes by the author.

26 27 F F I THE STORIES OF BILL MANHIRE I C THE INVISIBLE MILE C T T I David Coventry I O Bill Manhire O N June 2015 138 x 210 mm; 320 pp. N ISBN: 9781776560431 RRP: $30 Paperback Fiction November 2015 2015 ISBN: 9780864739254 (HB) , 9781776560752 (PB) 2015 Hardback, paperback to be printed in April 2016 The Invisible Mileis a powerful re-imagining of the 1928 Tour de France from inside 138 x 210 mm; 320 pp. the peloton, where the test of endurance, for one young New Zealander, becomes a RRP: $40 (HB), $30 (PB) Fiction psychological journey into the chaos of the War a decade earlier.

Longlisted for the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Sheep-shearing galas, Antarctic ponies, human clones, the Queen’s visit to , a pounamu ‘Why have we waited so long for such a brilliant debut?’ decoder, a childhood in the pubs of the South Island, —Sunday Star-Times the last days of Robert Louis Stevenson—this is Bill Manhire as backyard inventor, devising stories in ‘A truly extraordinary first novel.’ which the fabulous and the everyday collide. —NZ Listener The Stories of Bill Manhirecollects the stories from The New Land: A Picture Book(1990) and those added to South Pacific(1994) and Songs of My Life R.H.I. (1996). In addition there are previously uncollected and unpublished stories, the choose-your-own- Tim Corballis adventure novella The Brain of Katherine Mansfield (1988), and the memoir Under the Influence (2003). August 2015 138 x 210 mm; 208 pp. ISBN: 9780864739827 RRP: $30 Paperback Fiction ‘There’s alchemy at work here; a fiery energy in the spaces between stories. The volume delivers a sassy one- finger salute to any concern about staleness in re-issued Joan Riviere was an early English psychoanalyst and Sigmund Freud’s earliest translator. fiction.’ Hermann Henselmann was a German architect, famous for many of the post-war —Sue Orr, The Spinoff buildings of the German Democratic Republic. The two novellas about their lives explore complementary attitudes to the world. Lucidly realised and formally inventive, R.H.I. combines historical research with fiction, blurring and refocusing our ways of seeing the past.

‘You couldn’t ask for a more perceptive, painstaking companion through the mazes of human thoughts and motivations.’ —David Hill, NZ Herald 28 29 F F I I C THE BACK OF HIS HEAD TRIFECTA C T T I Ian Wedde I O Patrick Evans O N September 2015 138 x 210 mm; 178 pp. N ISBN: 9780864739834 RRP: $30 October 2015 Paperback Fiction 2015 ISBN: 9781776560462 2015 Paperback 138 x 210 mm; 376 pp. Trifecta looks at the odds in the lives of the three children of Martin and Agnes Klepka. RRP: $30 Fiction Martin was one of the refugees of Nazism who famously brought Modernist architecture and ‘real coffee’ to New Zealand. Many years after his early death from a heart attack, Klepka’s children are struggling in their different ways with the difficult legacy of their Raymond Thomas Lawrence was one of the charismatic, overbearing father. great literary colossi to bestride the twentieth century. He turned his upbringing in conservative ‘Trifecta is a triptych of skilfully drawn character portraits that together depict a main Canterbury and participation in the Algerian War character who never speaks for himself.’ of Independence into a series of novels that dazzled —NZ Listener the world, and eventually won him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Seven years after Lawrence’s death, however, the four trustees of the literary trust set up to memorialise New Zealand’s greatest writer are facing rising costs and dwindling visitor numbers at IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF FAME the Residence. While fending off a self-appointed Bridget van der Zijpp biographer, they find themselves confronting the secrets of their own intimate relationships with The Master. April 2015 138 x 210 mm; 272 pp. ISBN: 9780864739247 RRP: $30 The Back of His Head is a hilarious and troubling Paperback Fiction satire on the making and manipulation of literary fame, by the author of the acclaimed novel Gifted. Rock musician Jed Jordan’s former fame means the events in his life have become public Longlisted for the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book property. Vivid and engaging, In the Neighbourhood of Fame shines a light on modern Awards. relationship struggles within and between families, and on the unpredictable power of celebrity and social media.

‘Poignant, profane, insistently engaging. Patrick Evans ‘Van der Zijpp has written an adult, thought provoking and gripping story on a real gets better and better.’ social issue.’ —David Hill, Canvas —Sunday Star-Times

30 31 SONG OF THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE SOME OF US EAT THE SEEDS

Roger Horrocks Morgan Bach

May 2015 170 x 240 mm; 88 pp. July 2015 148 x 210 mm; 96 pp. ISBN: 9780864739858 RRP: $25 ISBN: 9780864739872 RRP: $25 Paperback Poetry Paperback Poetry

Song of the Ghost in the Machine is a free-wheeling philosophical poem that emerged Morgan Bach weaves a line between waking life and the unstable dreamworld beneath, during the walks Roger Horrocks took over a year of his life. In this striking, one-of-a- disorienting and reorienting us from moment to moment. In poems of childhood, family, kind work, he seeks to engage as directly as possible with the basic elements of life—the travel and relationships, she responds to the ache and sometimes horror of life in a voice self and the body, sleeping and waking, death and belief, and above all the strangeness of that is restless and witty, bold and sharp-edged. thought (‘the ghost in the machine’). In his curious look at life from unexpected angles, P he draws upon state-of-the-art science and philosophy, doing so in a lively, accessible, ‘Bach has the ability to hold her chosen material—however personal—at arm’s length. The P O down-to-earth way. fact her objectivity doesn’t preclude humour and compassion makes this debut all the more O E impressive.’ E T Longlisted for the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. —NZ Listener T R R Y Y BEING HERE: SELECTED POEMS FAILED LOVE POEMS 2015 2015 Vincent O’Sullivan Joan Fleming

April 2015 138 x 210 mm; 96 pp. August 2015 165 x 210 mm; 80 pp. ISBN: 9780864739315 RRP: $40 ISBN: 9780864739896 RRP: $25 Hardback Poetry Paperback Poetry

Being Here is the first book to survey the entire span of Vincent O’Sullivan’s poetry, from This book of fiction and slant autobiography by Joan Fleming occupies the dizzying space Bearings (1973) to new poems first published in this volume. On display is the full range between what can be told about love, and what cannot. of the wit, intellectual agility and arresting beauty of one of New Zealand literature’s finest poets. ‘Joan Fleming’s odd, singular vision is a wonderfully new and valuable addition to contemporary New Zealand poetry.’ ‘A stunningly good book.’ —Tim Upperton — NZ Books

‘The poetry has the wry wisdom and expansiveness of someone who has lived several lives, here vividly recreating the locations of that life: the Waikato, Wellington and Dunedin.’ —Landfall 32 33 OCEAN AND STONE GIVE US THIS DAY

Dinah Hawken Helena Wisniewska Brow

September 2015 148 x 210 mm; 120 pp. ISBN: 9781776560448 RRP: $35 May 2015 138 x 210 mm; 288 pp. Paperback Poetry ISBN: 9781776560509 RRP: $30 Paperback Non-fiction, memoir

Ocean and Stone, Dinah Hawken’s seventh collection of poetry, is a book of many Give Us This Day: A Memoir of Family and Exile explores the story of one of the 732 elements. At the heart of this book is urgency: the urgency to know the limits of our Polish child survivors of wartime Soviet deportation offered unlikely refuge in planet and ourselves, and to live within them. New Zealand. Seventy years later, and no closer to a longed-for Polish homecoming, Stefan’s New Zealand-born daughter revisits his past. What is the burden her father has ‘The experience of reading Hawken is to be lulled and then shocked awake, to see the land carried all these years? And why is he unable—or unwilling—to let it go? and the sea with such freshness you taste salt, and to feel her poems rise in your body.’ With an ageing father and the ghost of a namesake aunt as her guides, Helena P —NZ Booksellers Wiśniewska Brow searches for meaning in the family lives shaped by exile: her father’s, O her mother’s and her own. E T R Y THUDS UNDERNEATH REMEMBERING GALLIPOLI: INTERVIEWS 2015 WITH NEW ZEALAND GALLIPOLI VETERANS Brent Kininmont Edited by Christopher Pugsley and Charles Ferrall November 2015 138 x 210 mm; 72 pp. ISBN: 9781776560455 RRP: $25 May 2015 170 x 240 mm; 324 pp. Paperback Poetry ISBN: 9780864739919 RRP: $40 Paperback Non-fiction, history

Brent Kininmont’s first collection of poetry musters scenes from antiquity, a life in Japan, Remembering Gallipoli tells the story of Gallipoli in the words of the soldiers who N and a preoccupation with flight in its varied forms. Islands are stepping stones far below; fought there, taken from interviews towards the end of their lives. Immediate, vivid and O plains are bused, cycled, hiked across. At any moment a giant might appear. Poems tracing a engrossing, it is an important record of a pivotal moment in New Zealand’s history. N mother’s illness keep company with a daughter’s rapt examination of her world. Throughout these beautifully voiced and distilled pages, both loud and faint thuds can be detected. ‘How well served New Zealand has been by histories of its recent wars, especially of the F Gallipoli campaign, whose centenary is being marked this year […] The authors have done I future generations of New Zealanders a great service.’ C —Otago Daily Times T I O N 34 35 2015 An excerpt from : LIFE AND WORK MAURICE GEE: LIFE AND WORK

Rachel Barrowman All the best murders happen in Loomis.1 July 2015 152 x 232 mm; 456 pp. Maurice Gee once described himself as ‘a New- privacy should produce novels which both contain and ISBN: 9780864739926 RRP: $60 Zealandy sort of writer living in a New-Zealandy sort examine self-revelation. More than many writers, more Hardback Non-fiction, biography of place . . . writing New-Zealandy sort of books’.2 perhaps than most, Gee has written his life into his It is that ‘New Zealanderness’, to use C.K. Stead’s fiction. He has done so directly—in his Plumb trilogy, Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand’s greatest fiction writers. In this revelatory new work, term, its intense and particular familiarity, that gives which draws extensively on his family history, and acclaimed biographer Rachel Barrowman interweaves the story of Maurice Gee’s life with his fiction, illuminating the unassuming ‘man in the grey cardy’ alongside his unsettling Gee’s work its essential, central place in New Zealand remains the core of his literary achievement, especially stories. Immaculately researched, with full access to her subject and his records, Maurice literary culture: widely read, loved and awarded. His —and in smaller, subtle and allusive ways: in stories, Gee: Life and Work offers a fascinating portrait of a writing life. novels have won him many literary prizes. They have names and places, words and images, in an increasingly examined the domestic lives and drawn the landscapes rich and familiar symbolic and metaphoric repertoire. Longlisted for the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. of New Zealand’s provincial towns and middle- Across his extensive output—seventeen adult novels, ‘Barrowman is a brilliant guide through an eerie labyrinth of haunting fiction, her class suburbs with, in another critic’s words, ‘the thirteen novels for children, a short story collection, breakdowns of the plots is sure and clear and some of her sleuthing into sources and parallels 3 fidelity of a Balzac’. Yet it is far from a comfortable and screenplays for television and film, written over is breathtaking.’ familiarity. Maurice Gee’s fictional New Zealand is more than 50 years—Gee’s fictional landscape —NZ Listener a dark place, where murders happen, suicides and has drawn from a very particular, personal place. drownings, where families hurt and self-destruct, Looking for the traces of the life in the fiction THE DEEPENING STREAM: A HISTORY OF where there is violence and cruelty and evil. The term is at one level an easy game. It gains an added THE NEW ZEALAND LITERARY FUND New Zealandy he took from the Australian novelist dimension in the case of a writer whose novels most Patrick White, who referred to a certain, ‘New characteristically take biography or autobiography as Elizabeth Caffin and Andrew Mason Zealandy’ kind of murder and recognised a ‘despair their frame and the single consciousness as their point October 2015 138 x 210 mm; 304 pp. and confusion under the simple, uncomplicated of view; whose principal themes include the workings ISBN: 9781776560363 RRP: $40 Paperback Non-fiction, history New Zealand surface’.4 This is Gee’s territory. of memory and telling, and the processes of self- N It has frequently been remarked that it is a curious knowing—which include concealment and evasion. The New Zealand Literary Fund was a small amount of public money skilfully dispensed O thing: that such a quiet, reserved, unassuming— The place from which Gee’s fiction arises, and over forty years to hundreds of writers and publishers. The Deepening Stream charts the N ordinary—man as Gee should write such dark which it inscribes, is both a geographical and an growing confidence of New Zealand writers and the infrastructure supporting them, and and troubling stories. ‘The man in the grey cardy’, emotional one. He was to end where he began. gives vivid pictures of individual writers, fledgling publishers and struggling magazines. F I a late profile of him was affectionately titled, 1 Sole Survivor, London: Faber and Faber in association with Penguin, 1983, p.197. 2 Patricia Rolfe, ‘Kiwi characters come to life’, Bulletin, 18 Feb. 1997, p.72. ‘This book gives you such an interesting glimpse into how our literary culture came about C encapsulating Gee’s abiding impression of gentle 3 Ian Gordon, New Zealand Herald, 30 July 1994, section 3, p.7. […] an unofficial literary history, very rich in facts and figures.’ T 5 4 Patrick White to Ben Huebsch, 17 Feb. 1963, in David Marr (ed.), Patrick White: Letters, ordinariness. Where does the darkness come from? Sydney: Random House, 1994, p.219. —Harry Ricketts reviewing on Nine to Noon, Radio New Zealand I It is curious too that a man whose instincts tend to 5 Michele Hewitson, ‘Maurice Gee: the man in the grey cardy’, New Zealand Herald, O 29 July 2006. N 37 2015 THE EMPIRE CITY: SONGS OF WELLINGTON MOMENTS OF TRUTH: THE NEW ZEALAND GENERAL ELECTION OF 2014 Andrew Laking Edited by Jon Johansson and Stephen Levine September 2015 210 x 210mm; 64 pp. ISBN: 9780864739902 RRP: $35 September 2015 148 x 210 mm; 416 pp. Hardback Non-fiction, art, music ISBN: 9781776560493 RRP: $50 Paperback Non-fiction, politics The Empire City traces the history of Wellington, from the middle of the 19th Century till The 2014 general election was surely the most bizarre election campaign in New the present day. Stories are told through song, text, paintings and photographs and offer a Zealand’s history. creative insight into the history of life in the capital city. At the end of the day John Key remains the country’s prime minister—how, after all The book includes a CD with original songs by Andrew Laking, and features a number the tumult and confusion, did that happen? of exceptional guest artists. The contributors to Moments of Truth—an experienced group of political party leaders and campaign managers, media and political commentators, pollsters, consultants and ‘The Empire City speaks quietly, and by not raising its voice invites you in to pay closer academics—seek to provide some answers and insights into an election unlike any before attention . . . and Kerr’s images (and a couple of recent photos by Ines MacMullen) it. compliment the project with similar understatement.’ —Elsewhere

THE PLAYS OF BRUCE MASON: A SURVEY THE COLLECTION AND RETENTION OF DNA FROM SUSPECTS IN NEW ZEALAND John Smythe Nessa Lynch and Liz Campbell November 2015 138 x 210 mm; 266 pp. ISBN: 9781776560554 RRP: $40 Paperback Non-fiction, theatre November 2015 170 x 240 mm; 271 pp. ISBN: 9781776560516 RRP: $40 Paperback Non-fiction, law

N The Plays of Bruce Mason is the first comprehensive survey of Mason’s dramatic works. In New Zealand was an early adopter of DNA forensic technology. It has now been 20 N O this critical overview, Smythe interrogates each text to reveal a master craftsman’s artistry, years since the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995 was introduced, and O N at the cutting edge of socio-political awareness. since then the range and power of DNA forensics, as well as the powers of the state to N obtain DNA samples, have expanded rapidly, raising questions about the implications for F ‘This a worthy volume for any theatre lover interested in our dramatic history.’ criminal justice and human rights. F I —, Canvas This book provides a framework for discussion of these implications, and makes I C recommendations for how to proceed with laws about the collection and retention of C T DNA samples from those suspected of committing a crime. T I I O O N N 38 39 2015 2015