Alan Duff

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Once Were Warriors

Penguin Shop: 3 Clothbound Classics for £33

A searing look at the urban subculture of New Zealand's native people

A starkly realistic account...as important, as frank, as powerful a book as [Alice Walker's The Color Purple] was for Americans

The Hekes are a family in turmoil. A tyrannical, alcoholic, violent patriarch, an alcoholic, ever-trying-to-reform mother, and three degenerate children. Can the draw Maori ritual and tradition pull them back from the brink?

An astonishing, moving portrait of a Maori family in total crisis

Alan Duff was born in 1950 and lives with his wife and four children in Havelock North, New Zealand. He has published six novels, most notably, the Once Were Warriors trilogy; a novella, State Ward; and six works of non-fiction, including the controversial Maori: The Crisis and the Challenge. Once Were Warriors won the PEN Best First Book for Fiction Award and was made into an internationally acclaimed film for which Alan Duff wrote the original screenplay.

Once Were Warriors

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