Thursday, August 08, 2013

OUR NEW ZEALAND - Sarah Ell & Nicola Legat



 
Our New Zealand
-a celebration of our National Treasures and Pleasures
Sarah Ell and Nicola Legat
Hardback - Random House NZ - RRP: $49.99

Released: 16 August 2013

 ‘It’s a big ask to sum up what makes a nation tick,and what its people treasure and love. It can be done by selecting objects, music, poems, songs,recipes, heroes and touchstones that stand for the myriad strands that combine to create a national culture. That’s what this book seeks to do — it’s a sampler of New Zealand’s storehouse of treasures — to take home to be part of yours.’
So reads the introduction to a truly gorgeous new book on this country that’s released by Random House on August 16.

Our New Zealand covers not only New Zealand’s most loved wild places, birds, trees, sports and important days, it also covers the quotidian and adventurous things New Zealanders love to do — from eating cone ice creams and overnighting in mountain huts, to messing about in boats and cooking up a feed of whitebait fritters.

New Zealand’s rich literature and art is also explored, through three of the nation’s most
moving poems and some of its favourite landscape paintings.

“We wanted to publish a book that’s free of hackneyed kiwiana,” says Random House publishing director Nicola Legat. “Bookstores are full of gorgeous pictorial books that show a magnificent country. But what about the people who live in it? All too often they are absent from those photos.
We wanted to show how we live here, all the ways in which we do that, the things that we value most highly. From that comes an understanding of who we are as a people.”
 
Beautifully illustrated, with stunning photographs by some of the country’s best photographers, it’s a book for New Zealanders to share with friends, family and associates especially those who live overseas — and also a book that reminds us of how lucky we are to live here.

If you are sending one book to overseas ex-pat family/friends this year make it this one. It is a cracker.
 
A celebration of New Zealand, for both New Zealanders and visitors to enjoy and cherish

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