A real shaggy dog story

KIM KNIGHT - stuff.co.nz 06/04/2014

Photo of Margaret Mahy

by David Hallett/Fairfax NZ

Christchurch author Margaret Mahy's last book published this week. Hachette--$19.99.

A magic dog who grants wishes with the wag of his tail is the star of the last book children's author Margaret Mahy wrote before her death.

But the truth of the posthumously published story is even stranger than its fiction.

The Sunday Star Times has learned Mahy's final book, scheduled for first release here on Tuesday, was a commission from a world famous photographer and the son of one of Poland's richest men.

Tomasz Gudzowaty said he negotiated the book with Mahy because he was "seeking a way to share that feeling, that experience" of his friendship with his dog Naykee. "When the thought about the book crossed my mind for the first time, Naykee was in perfect health, and it might seem that our friendship - I think it's a proper word for our relationship - would last forever," Gudzowaty said.
"Yet I was aware, as every adult is, that nothing in this world is forever."

The nine-time World Press Photo award-winner and son of Aleksander Gudzowaty (a businessman who died last year and who was once estimated to have a fortune of $3.7 billion) said while he had thousands of images and video recordings of Naykee, he considered literature, "another medium of memory".
"I started to ask friends about their children's favourite books, to browse all available books of award-winning authors for children and teens - a new educative experience for me, by the way - and that's how I found Margaret Mahy. Only one book of hers, The Changeover, was published in Poland so far.
"I was so enchanted by the narrative - simple, readable, even for children, yet amazingly serious in the subject matter and the approach to the reader. It resounded with the echoes of the favourite books of my childhood and youth."

Gudzowaty wouldn't reveal the cost of his commission - originally conceived as a series of loosely connected stories and later revised to become a short novel - and said the only copyright Mahy had transferred to him related to any future Polish editions.

"The negotiations, whatever that may mean, focused on convincing Margaret that Naykee's story was worth being told, that it might be enjoyed by readers . . . I felt obliged to offer a fair amount of money, adequate to Margaret's rank in literature and she found my proposal fair and adequate."

Mahy died in July, 2012, aged 76, three months after being diagnosed with oral cancer. This country's most acclaimed children's author, she wrote more than 100 picture books, 40 novels and 20 collections of short stories. Naykee also died in 2012. 
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