Showing results by author "Alan Duff" in All Categories

Once Were Warriors is Alan Duff's harrowing vision of his country's indigenous people two hundred years after the English conquest. In prose that is both raw and compelling, it tells the story of Beth Heke, a Maori woman struggling to keep her family from falling apart, despite the squalor and violence of the housing projects in which they live.

As Assistant Private Secretary to four monarchs, 'Tommy' Lascelles had a ringside seat from which to observe the workings of the royal household and Downing Street during the first half of the 20th century. These fascinating diaries begin with Edward VIII's abdication and end with George VI's death and his daughter Elizabeth's Coronation. In between we see George VI at work and play, a portrait more intimate than any other previously published.  

Sonny Bill Williams (SBW) is a once in a hundred-year athlete with immense sporting talent in Rugby League, Rugby Union and Boxing. Sonny Bill has built an incredible career and sporting reputation across the globe. His athleticism has taken him from inner-city Auckland, where he grew up, to the...

The millennium has changed but have the Hekes? Where are they now, Beth, Jake and what of their other children? Son Abe who has rejected violence but violence finds him. Polly, as beautiful as her sister Grace, who committed suicide; is that a Heke running around with the wealthy polo-playing set and growing rich herself? And the gang leader, Apeman, who killed Tania, what's prison like, does it change a man, grow him or not?

The raw and powerful sequel to Once Were Warriors. It is six years since Jake's daughter Grace hanged herself. Jake's wife, Beth, has left him, his son Nig was killed in a gangland fight - his only consolations are drink and his memories. His daughter, Polly, is determined to escape the violence that is destroying the Maoris. But can Jake, too, redeem himself?

Following Once Were Warriors, Alan Duff wrote Maori: The Crisis and the Challenge. His controversial comments shook the country. A quarter of a century later, New Zealand and Maoridom are in a very different place. And so is Alan - he has published many more books, had two films made of his works, founded the Duffy Books in Homes literacy programme and endured 'some less inspiring moments, including bankruptcy'.

Riley's daughter, Anna, seems to have everything: looks, money, confidence. Lu has nothing except her friends and the sense of inferiority and rage she feels the moment she sets eyes on Anna Chadwick. Feelings that will run out of control...

Jimmy understands all about belonging and not belonging. He sees himself as part of both sides of the moon – kind of black man and kind of white. Part of a fractured family, it's only when he learns about his forebear – a brave warrior who became an outcast from his tribe – that he begins to understand the darker implications of his heritage.

Boys’ homes, borstal, jail, stealing, then jail again – and again. That’s been life for Jube and Sonny. One Pakeha, the other Maori, only vaguely aware of life beyond pubs and their hopeless cronies. Then, one night out stealing, the two small-time hoods chance upon the home of a wealthy Wellington lawyer … The ensuing events unfold with stark brutality amidst a seldom-seen New Zealand cityscape of littered streets, crowded highways and noisy smoke-filled bars – a world of inarticulate turmoil that Jube and Sonny are unlikely to ever escape.

Here for the first time is this controversial writer's real childhood and early adulthood. The mixed feelings of an intelligent, sensitive child – talented but tormented; the eventual separation from his family; violence, crime, borstal and finally prison in England. How he turned his life around to become, not only New Zealand's bestselling novelist, but also a spokesperson for a large number of underprivileged New Zealanders, a controversial columnist and the initiator of the brilliantly successful Books in Homes schemes is both moving and compelling listening.

When Johno comes out of prison, he resolves never to go back again. But his new life is not easy, especially as he soon finds himself in sole charge of his strange young son, Danny. Danny isn't the kind of son he would have chosen, but, in caring for the boy, Johno finds new meaning and new direction. But what do you do when the world you've so carefully built comes crashing down? Can you ever escape your past?

Charlie Wilson, the 'state house boy' from Two Lakes, is sent to Riverton Boys' Home as a state ward until such time as he is seen fit to return to society. The door in the cellblock isn't the only thing that Charlie finds is for real. There's also the name 'George' scrawled on the walls, and by it the word 'kehua' or ghost.

Yank is an ordinary enough teenager, except that he lives in a thermal wonderland (frequented by tourists eager to view the geysers and boiling mud) and except for the fact that one of those tourists (an American soldier visiting during the Second World War) was his father. The locals gave the boy the nickname of Yank, a name that makes him different and ensures his mother's husband will never accept him as his own. So who was Yank's real father? Yank has only his dreams to fill the void, until the day a letter arrives ...

It is the 1950s. The Soviets and the Secret Police have a choking grip on Hungary and the lives of its citizens. Attila Szabo is one of them, just a teenager, but he's been forced to grow up quickly, with his father in prison. In the top-floor flat, a new couple has just moved in, clearly different in class, so why have they been sent here and can they be trusted? But it's the beautiful wife who is of interest to Attila. His coming fight for his country's freedom is also to become one of passion.