Book launch

2.00 pm, Sunday 10 March, 2019
Nectar Lounge, Kingslander Hotel
New North Road, Auckland

Free admission
Live band – Any Day Now
MC is Roger Horrocks
Full restaurant and bar facilities available.

About the book

NOVEL by Vaughan Rapatahana
Published by Rangitawa Publishing, 2018
ISBN 9780995104662
320 pages trade paperback or on Kindle

The rapidly developing action in Novel straddles Aotearoa New Zealand, Hong Kong SAR, Philippines and beyond. In our contemporary world of increasing electronic surveillance from hegemonic national administrations, several diverse characters struggle to survive to resist in a variety of ways. At the same time the so-called established methods of writing fiction undergo deconstruction.

Excerpt

… Still, he couldn’t help sensing undercurrents, an undertow. Like there was a plot to the story but no one could quite sus it out just yet. They all knew they had a role or two to play, but no one had gotten round to giving anyone a script, eh. Who was the bad guy? Who was the killer? Who was the sheriff? Who was the author and what were they on about anyway?

What people are saying

“With its range of exotic settings and even more exotic characters, Novel is a switchback ride written in Rapatahana’s inimitable switchblade prose. A violent murder in a rural New Zealand meat works is the catalyst for a series of fast-moving events that ultimately have geopolitical consequences involving the struggles of dispossessed people and the shady efforts of the powers that be to thwart them.”

-James Norcliffe

“A blazing tale of international politics and murder, and the people entangled in it, by design or accident, told in a style that detaches the reader from comfortable reading and a comfortable world, or even a comfortable reading of the world.”

-John Gallas

“Novel is an innovative and complex creation, both a thriller with fast-moving pace and a meditation on today’s and tomorrow’s world. It is an absorbing read, a journey to diverse cultures…The story weaves back and forth through a multiplicity of unfolding situations both gripping and thought provoking. Be afraid. Or not.”

-Alan Chamberlain

“The novel has a highly visual cinematic quality to it, cutting quickly from scene to scene while letting the action speak for itself. Its uncluttered narrative held my attention to the last page. It deserves a wide readership.”

-Bob Orr

“I’ll see you at the launch, eh.”

-Vaughan Rapatahana