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  • Published: 4 May 2004
  • ISBN: 9780143019329
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 156
  • RRP: $30.00

Mutuwhenua




This is the story of Ripeka, who leaves her extended family and its traditional lifestyle to marry Graeme, a Pakeha schoolteacher. In the strange world of the city, Ripeka discovers that she cannot make the break with her whanau and that the old ways are too strong. Patricia Grace s first novel is a powerful, moving story of contrasts – between light and darkness, old and new, young and old, and Maori and Pakeha.
Also available as an eBook

  • Published: 4 May 2004
  • ISBN: 9780143019329
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 156
  • RRP: $30.00

About the author

Patricia Grace

Patricia Grace is one of New Zealand’s most prominent and celebrated Maori fiction authors and a figurehead of modern New Zealand literature. She garnered initial acclaim in the 1970s with her collection of short stories entitled Waiariki (1975) — the first published book by a Maori woman in New Zealand. She has published six novels and seven short story collections, as well as a number of books for children and a work of non-fiction. She won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction for Potiki in 1987, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2001 with Dogside Story, which also won the 2001 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Prize. Her children’s story The Kuia and the Spider won the New Zealand Picture Book of the Year in 1982.

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Praise for Mutuwhenua

The emotions of compassion and gentleness so skillfully evoked in these pages will I feel sure, remain with the reader for a long time.

NZ Bookworld