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  • Published: 1 November 2011
  • ISBN: 9781869793609
  • Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

The Trouble With Fire




Shortlisted for the NZ Post Awards and the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award.

A beautiful collection of stories by a pre-eminent writer, shortlisted for major awards.

Fiona Kidman has a genius for peeling back the lives of ordinary people to reveal their hidden passions and complexities. In this brilliant new collection, she explores - with her customary subtlety and insight - how we are all touched and sometimes scarred by the flames of emotion - whether it be the impossible love of a pregnant woman for a married man, grief for a dead baby or loss of a young woman in mysterious circumstances. Ranging in time from the colonial period to the present day, these stories by one of New Zealand's foremost writers are beautifully crafted, intriguing and evocative.

'[Her] stories remind me of those of Alice Munro. Though they are very much of a time and place they have a universal dimension.' - Booksellers News

Shortlisted for the NZ Post Awards and the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award.

  • Published: 1 November 2011
  • ISBN: 9781869793609
  • Imprint: RHNZ Adult ebooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

About the author

Fiona Kidman

Fiona Kidman has published over 30 books, including novels, poetry, non-fiction and a play. She has worked as a librarian, radio producer and critic, and as a scriptwriter for radio, television and film. The New Zealand Listener wrote: ‘In her craft and her storytelling and in her compassionate gutsy tough expression of female experience, she is the best we have.’

She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships; in more recent years, The Captive Wife was runner-up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction and was joint-winner of the Readers’ Choice Award in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and her short story collection The Trouble with Fire was shortlisted for both the NZ Post Book Awards and the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. Her novel This Mortal Boy won the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the NZ Booklovers Award, the NZSA Heritage Book Award for Fiction and the Ngaio Marsh Crime Writing Award for Best Novel.

She was created a Dame (DNZM) in 1998 in recognition of her contribution to literature, and more recently a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour. ‘We cannot talk about writing in New Zealand without acknowledging her,’ wrote New Zealand Books. ‘Kidman’s accessible prose and the way she shows (mainly) women grappling to escape from restricting social pressures has guaranteed her a permanent place in our fiction.’

Also by Fiona Kidman

See all

Awards & recognition

NZ Post Book Awards

Finalist  •  2012  •  Fiction category

Frank O'Conner Short Story Award

Shortlisted  •  2012  •  n/a