Max Gate
By (Author) Damien Wilkins
Te Herenga Waka University Press
Victoria University Press
9th June 2013
New Zealand
General
Fiction
Short-listed for New Zealand Post Book Awards: Fiction 2014
Paperback
220
It's 1928 and the world's most famous novelist, Thomas Hardy, is dying in the upstairs room of Max Gate, the house he built in his beloved Dorset. Downstairs, his high-powered literary friends are becoming locked in a bitter fight with local supporters. Who owns Hardy's remains Who knew the great man best What are the secrets of Max Gate Nellie Titterington, a maid at the house, narrates this earthy and emotionally-charged novel about a world of ambition, duty, belonging and love.
Damien Wilkins is one of New Zealand's leading writers, the author of seven novels, including the New Zealand Book Award-winning The Miserables, and The Fainter, which was shortlisted for both the Montana New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. He won a Whiting Writers Award and the 2008 New Zealand Post Mansfield Prize. He lives in Wellington, where he is the Director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University.