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The Bone People
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The Bone People Paperback - 1986

by Keri Hulme

Set in the harsh environment of the South Island beaches of New Zealand, this masterful story brings together three singular people in a trinity that reflects their country's varied heritage. Winner of the 1985 Booker-McConnell prize for fiction.


Summary

In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes, part Maori, part European, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor—a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon's feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where Maori and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge.

Winner of both a Booker Prize and Pegasus Prize for Literature, The Bone People is a work of unfettered wordplay and mesmerizing emotional complexity.

From the publisher

The powerful, visionary, Booker Award-winning novel about the complicated relationships between three outcasts of mixed European and Maori heritage "This book is just amazingly, wondrously great." --Alice Walker In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes: part Maori, part European, asexual and aromantic, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor--a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon's feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where indigenous and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge.Winner of both a Booker Prize and Pegasus Prize for Literature, The Bone People is a work of unfettered wordplay and mesmerizing emotional complexity.

Details

  • Title The Bone People
  • Author Keri Hulme
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition [ Edition: Repri
  • Pages 464
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
  • Date 1986-10-07
  • ISBN 9780140089226 / 0140089225
  • Weight 0.8 lbs (0.36 kg)
  • Dimensions 7.6 x 5 x 1.1 in (19.30 x 12.70 x 2.79 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Library of Congress subjects Racially mixed people, Boys
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 86005026
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

"This book is just amazingly, wondrously great."
—Alice Walker

"An original, overwhelming, near-great work of literature"
The Washinton Post Book World

"Unforgettably rich and pungent"
The New York Times Book Review

Citations

  • Publishers Weekly, 01/01/1986, Page 0

About the author

Keri Hulme (1947-2021): The Maori novelist, poet, and short story writer who became the first New Zealander to win the Booker Prize for this luminous debut novel. She grew up in Christchurch and Moeraki, New Zealand. She spent much of her time smoking a pipe or cigarillos, playing the guitar, painting, fishing, eating, drinking and cooking. She began two additional novels, each running to hundreds of pages, but they were never finished.
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The Bone People: Booker Prize Winner (A Novel)
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The Bone People: Booker Prize Winner (A Novel)

by Hulme, Keri

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The Bone People: A Novel
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The Bone People: A Novel

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The Bone People: A Novel

The Bone People: A Novel

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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The Bone People: A Novel

The Bone People: A Novel

by Hulme, Keri

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780140089226 / 0140089225
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The Bone People: A Novel

The Bone People: A Novel

by Hulme, Keri

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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The Bone People: Booker Prize Winner (A Novel)
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The Bone People: Booker Prize Winner (A Novel)

by Hulme, Keri

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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The Bone People : Booker Prize Winner (a Novel)
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The Bone People : Booker Prize Winner (a Novel)

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The Bone People : Booker Prize Winner (a Novel)
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The Bone People : Booker Prize Winner (a Novel)

by Hulme, Keri, Hulme, Keri

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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The Bone People : Booker Prize Winner (a Novel)
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The Bone People : Booker Prize Winner (a Novel)

by Hulme, Keri, Hulme, Keri

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780140089226 / 0140089225
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