An evocative memoir about the emergence of a pre - eminent writer in a changing world. 'What I have to tell is largely a personal narrative about how I came to inhabit a fictional world' This absorbing memoir explores the first half of writer Fiona Kidman's life, notably in Kerikeri amid the 'sharp citric scent of orange groves, bright heat and ... the shadow of Asia' - at the end of Darwin Road. From the distance of France, where Kidman spent...
Jean Batten became an international icon in the 1930s. A brave, beautiful woman, she made a number of heroic solo flights across the world. The newspapers couldn't get enough of her, and yet she suddenly slipped out of view, disappearing to the Caribbean with her mother and dying in obscurity in Majorca, buried in a pauper's grave. Fiona Kidman's enthralling novel delves into the life of this enigmatic woman, probing mysteries and crafting a f...
An utterly compelling recreation of the events that led to one of the last executions in New Zealand. Albert Black, known as the 'jukebox killer', was only twenty when he was convicted of murdering another young man in a fight at a milk bar in Auckland on 26 July 1955. His crime fuelled growing moral panic about teenagers, and he was to hang less than five months later, the second-to-last person to be executed in New Zealand. But what really h...
October 1955. If Albert Black sings to himself he can almost see himself back home in Belfast. Yet here he stands in a prison cell in Auckland, thousands of miles away from his family. He had come in search of a better life, but after a disastrous brawl the fate of the young ?Jukebox Killer' is hanging in the balance - and the jury is unlikely to favour an outsider. Based on true events during the turbulent decade between the reinstatement and...
The scene is Auckland during the Second World War. In the warrenlike old tenement the residents call Paddy's Puzzle, Clara Bentley awaits the arrival of Ambrose, her black lover, an American marine. She also waits for the bomb that might fall when the air raid siren sounds at night. She waits for visits from the strange inhabitants of the Puzzle-prostitutes, blackmarketeers, old Ma Hollis, who helps her keep body and soul together, and a host ...
In 1952, war widow Irene takes her young daughter to start a new life in New Zealand's tobacco fields. But tragedy forces her into the arms of Jock, whose actions will haunt the lives of the couple's future children—though strong-willed Belinda will carve her own path through a changing world and seize a second chance. The dark legacy of the past echoes through the generations in this moving family saga beginning in 1950s New Zealand.
From the New Zealand author of "The Infinite Air", this is a powerful story of women's lives, spanning decades and continents. With appeal to fans of Maggie O'Farrell, Anne Tyler and Elena Ferrante. 'A novelist writing at the peak of her powers' "New Zealand Herald
FIONA KIDMANS Roman erzählt die spannende Lebensgeschichte der neuseeländischen Flugpionierin Jean Batten (1909-1982). In den 1930er Jahren wurde sie als »die Garbo der Lüfte« zur Ikone der modernen Flugkunst.
Bei ihrem ersten Versuch, nach Australien zu fliegen, scheitert sie grandios mit einem alten Flugzeug des Prinzen von Wales. Doch sie gibt nicht auf. 1936 gelingt ihr der erste Soloflug überhaupt von England nach Neuseeland. Zuvor war s...
