Bøker av Fiona Kidman

An evocative memoir about the emergence of a pre - eminent writer in a changing world. 'What I have to tell is largely a personal narrative about how I came to inhabit a fictional world' This absorbing memoir explores the first half of writer Fiona Kidman's life, notably in Kerikeri amid the 'sharp citric scent of orange groves, bright heat and ... the shadow of Asia' - at the end of Darwin Road. From the distance of France, where Kidman spent time as the Katherine Mansfield Fellow in Menton, she reconsiders the past, weaving personal reflection and experience with the history of the places where she lived, particularly the fascinating northern settlements of Kerikeri and Waipu, and further south the cities of Rotorua and Wellington. Her story crosses paths with those of numerous different New Zealanders, from the Tuhoe prophet Rua Kenana, to descendants of the migration from Scotland led by a charismatic Presbyterian minister, to other writers and significant friends. We learn of Kidman's struggles to establish herself as a writer and to become part of different communities, and how each worked their way into her fiction. At the End of Darwin Road is a vivid memoir of place and family, and of becoming a writer: 'I was certain that ... I would continue to write, if possible, every day of my life.'

Kidman's powerful novel explores the controversial topic of the death penalty with characteristic empathy and a probing eye for injustice. Winner of The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2019, the New Zealand Booklovers' Prize for Fiction 2019, and the New Zealand Heritage Book Awards 2018.

The dark legacy of the past echoes through the generations in this moving family saga beginning in 1950s New Zealand.

The lives of a group of young women converge in 1960s New Zealand in a moving time- and continent-spanning saga.

The rise and fall of the 'Garbo of the skies', as told by one of New Zealand's finest novelists. Jean Batten became an international icon in 1930s. A brave, beautiful woman, she made a number of heroic solo flights across the world. The newspapers couldn't get enough of her. In 1934, she broke Amy Johnson's flight time between England and Australia by six days. The following year, she was the first woman to make the return flight. In 1936, she made the first ever direct flight between England and New Zealand and then the fastest ever trans-Tasman flight. Jean Batten stood for adventure, daring, exploration and glamour. The Second World War ended Jean's flying adventures. She suddenly slipped out of view, disappearing to the Caribbean with her mother and eventually dying in Majorca, buried in a pauper's grave. Fiona Kidman's enthralling novel delves into the life of this enigmatic woman. It is a fascinating exploration of early aviation, of fame, and of secrecy.

The scene is Auckland during the Second World War. In the warrenlike old tenement the residents call Paddy's Puzzle, Clara Bentley awaits the arrival of Ambrose, her black lover, an American marine. She also waits for the bomb that might fall when the air raid siren sounds at night. She waits for visits from the strange inhabitants of the Puzzle-prostitutes; blackmarketeers; old Ma Hollis, who helps her keep body and soul together; and a host of others. She waits, too, for the culmination of an illness that has weakened her irremediably.