Book Book by Fiona Farrell

• Christchurch City Libraries, New Zealand

Publisher of Nominated Edition
Vintage RHNZ ISBN 1869416198

As war is waged in the Middle East, a woman in New Zealand has her nose in a book. Kate is immersed in other battles, engrossed in eyewitness accounts of an earlier war in ancient Persia. She has grown up, left her Otago home and returned, and in all these years books have shaped her life and made sense of the world - offering mystery and solace, entertainment and enlightenment.

In an evocative and moving mix of memoir and fiction, award-winning novelist Fiona Farrell writes of life from The Little Red Hen to Owls Do Cry, from T.S. Eliot to Aphra Behn. Frequently funny, always original, Book Book is another extraordinary offering from the author of The Hopeful Traveller.

Fiona Farrell was born in Oamaru in 1947. She has worked as an editor and a teacher in both Canada and New Zealand and now lives in Palmerston North. Her poetry and short stories have been widely published in New Zealand journals and anthologies, and her plays have been performed by radio New Zealand, the Depot Theatre and a variety of amateur drama groups. In 1987 Auckland University published a collection of her poetry, Cutting Out, followed by a collection of her short stories, The Rock Garden. She has received several awards, including a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Scholarship in Letters in 1991, which enabled her to complete her first novel, The Skinney Louie Book.