Powerful and visionary, Keri Hulme has written the great New Zealand novel of our times. The Bone People is the story of Kerewin, a despairing part-Maori artist who is convinced that her solitary life is the only way to face the world. Her cocoon is rudely blown away by the sudden arrival during a rainstorm of Simon, a mute six-year-old whose past seems to hold some terrible trauma. In his wake comes his foster-father Joe, a Maori factory worker with a nasty temper. The narrative unravels to reveal the truths that lie behind these three characters, and in so doing displays itself as a huge, ambitious work that tackles the clash between Maori and European characters in beautiful prose of a heartrending poignancy.
Accolades
Winner of Booker Prize for Fiction 1985.
New Zealand Book Award Winner 1984.
Author Biography
Keri Hulme has Kai Tahu, Orkney Island and English ancestry and lives on the West Coast of New Zealand. She is a writer and painter and has published short stories in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies, and also a book of poetry. She is currently at work on her second novel, Bait.
