Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The Broken Book by Fiona Farrell


Auckland University Press and University Bookshop Canterbury invite you to celebrate the publication of The Broken Book by Fiona Farrell.
5.30-7pm on Thursday 20th October 2011 at University Bookshop Canterbury, University Drive, Ilam, Christchurch.

RSVP by 18th October 2011 to Anna Ferguson, Email : anna@ubscan.co.nz; Telephone : (03) 364 2043 x3774.
Publication is kindly assisted by Creative New Zealand.

About the book:
‘Last year I was writing a book about walking. A travel book, meandering, following the random associative habit of thought associated with a walk through a landscape. It would ramble. It would detour to examine curiosities. It would link walking with books read along the way or the things learned in conversation with strangers. . . . Then an earthquake shook me from bed and ripped up the map entirely. The quake sent a jagged tear right through my text.’

Fiona Farrell’s meandering travel book shows how an earthquake can change everything in a flash: the book you were writing, the house you were living in, the thoughts that preoccupied you.
The Broken Book consists of four essays about life and walking, bookended by a preamble and an afterword, and interrupted by 21 poems about the Christchurch earthquakes and their aftermath. The poems jolt into the essays like aftershocks, like cracks in the text; they make you pause and reconsider.
The Broken Book is funny, timely, deeply personal but never self-indulgent - it shows Fiona’s talents as a writer and warmth as a human being.
Auckland University Press. $34.99

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