Max Gate - Softcover

Wilkins, Damien

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0864738994 ISBN 13: 9780864738998

Publisher: Victoria University Press, 2013

Synopsis

It is 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.

About this title

About the Author:

Damien Wilkins: 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. In 2013 he became the Director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. Wilkins completed his MFA at Washington University and won a Whiting Award in 1992.

Review:

'Max Gate is superbly attuned to that tremulous moment just before everything changes forever – the Hardy household, the known world of domestic servitude and dutiful women. Damien Wilkins, who writes fabulous prose, is a wise and imaginative guide to this fascinating terrain. He has created that wondrous thing, a novel that surprises and delights at every turn.' Michelle de Kretser

'Lyrical ... beautifully crafted ... As Hardy is lauded as one of the finest English writers, Wilkins is one of New Zealand's great wordsmiths' New Zealand Herald

Praise for Damien Wilkins:

'Mr. Wilkins can command a breathtakingly supple literary style' New York Times

'Remarkable talent for setting scenes and sketching characters ... a tour de force display of a deep and abiding literary gift and marks Wilkins as a young novelist of extraordinary promise' Publishers Weekly

'A witty and sentient writer' LA Times

Max Gate - fiction finalist 2014 New Zealand Post Book Awards.

The Miserables won the 1994 New Zealand Book Award for Fiction. Wilkins wrote it while completing his Master of Fine Arts at Washington University, and in America it scored the coveted Whiting Award.

Nineteen Widows Under Ash (2000) and The Fainter (2006) have been Runner-Up at the Montana Book Awards.

About this edition

• Publisher: Victoria University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0864738994
• ISBN 13: 9780864738998
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 220