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  • Published: 24 July 2013
  • ISBN: 9781742539508
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 504

The Matriarch




In keeping with his commitment to revisit his first five pieces of fiction, Witi Ihimaera has reworked the original text of this much-loved classic.

The matriarch is a woman of intelligence, wit, beauty and ruthlessness, and has become a mythical figure through her fight to repossess the land and sustain her people against the ravages wrought by the Pakeha. Priestess of the Ringatu faith, she has been virtually a law unto herself.
In his search for the truth behind the legends surrounding the matriarch, his grandmother, Tama Mahana delves deeper and deeper into Maori history and lore to understand the mysterious sources of her power and ambition.
Witi Ihimaera's prose is at turns lyrical and spare, sensuous and savage. Weaving fact with fiction, this remarkable odyssey into New Zealand history is a novel of stunning imaginative power.
Also available as an eBook
Winner of the Wattie Book of the Year, 1986
Runner-up for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, 1987

'Witi Ihimaera's uncompromising masterwork . . . A profound and spellbinding character study' - New Zealand Herald

  • Published: 24 July 2013
  • ISBN: 9781742539508
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 504

About the author

Witi Ihimaera



Three-time winner of the Wattie/Montana Book of the Year award, Katherine Mansfield fellow and playwright Witi Ihimaera is one of New Zealand’s most prolific and accomplished writers. Witi’s first novel, Tangi, won the Wattie Book of the Year Award in 1974, a feat he repeated with The Matriarch in 1986. His celebrated novel Bulibasha, King of the Gypsies, now adapted as the film Mahana, won the Montana Book of the Year award in 1995. Witi’s other novels and short story collections include The Whale Rider (also adapted as an internationally successful film); Dream Swimmer (sequel to the award-winning The Matriarch); Pounamu, Pounamu and Nights In The Gardens of Spain. In 2015 he published the first volume of his autobiography, Maori Boy.
 

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