Author(s): Keri Hulme

NZ Fiction

This novel is one of a dozen classics released in the Popular Penguin format to mark 50 years of publishing in New Zealand. The format reaches further back to 1935, when Allen Lane founded Penguin Books with a clear vision- 'We believed in the existence of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it.'


Winner of the Booker Award, this powerful and mesmerising novel tracks the complicated relationships between three outcasts of mixed European and Maori heritage- Kerewin, an artist estranged from her family and art; a mute boy called Simon, who tries to steal from her; and his tender but brutal foster father Joe.