South Pacific

by Manhire, Bill

• ISBN13: 9781857540468
• ISBN10: 1857540468
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-02-01
• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.

Summary

These sometimes savage, sometimes wry and rueful, always inventive stories evoke the reality of the South Pacific Zealand and environs - with its "more market economy" tourists and its wacky national pride. Several of the pieces, first collected in "The New Land", won the 1990 Buckland Award for the best work of literature published in New Zealand. To "South Pacific" Bill Manhire adds new tales and other work. There's a do-it-yourself murder mystery, the story of an assassination attempt on the Queen, the hilarious account of a Writers' Congress in Kuala Lumpur, and an unsettling, futuristic tale set in 1999. A vein of satire runs through Bill Manhire's stories. Yet, rooted as many of them are in a particular place and time, the laughter they generate is anything but local.

Author Biography

Bill Manhire is currently Reader in English at Victoria University at Wellington.

Table of Contents

Cannibals	p. 1
Some Questions I am Frequently Asked	p. 19
Ponies	p. 34
The Poet's Wife	p. 46
Highlights	p. 57
Ventriloquial	p. 67
Siena	p. 81
The Moon at the End of the Century	p. 88
The Days of Sail	p. 99
Flights of Angels	p. 112
Songs of My Life	p. 119
South Pacific	p. 129
Wings of Gold: A Week among Poets	p. 144
The Brain of Katherine Mansfield	p. 177
Jenny's Bicycle	p. 228
Nonchalance or The New Land: A Picture Book	p. 230
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