Bridget Williams Books
RRP: $39.99
I haven’t lived long enough
yet to have lost a sense of hope or a sense of the possible. But I’ve lived
long enough to know that things are moving too slowly for those of us with
hope, who want to make the impossible possible. And I’ve lived close enough to
death to feel like we have no time to lose.
– Max Harris, The New
Zealand Project
It would be tempting to say that
Max Harris is a young man in a hurry. Certainly there is a sense of urgency
evident in the pages of The New Zealand Project, the title of this, his
extraordinary first book: extraordinary in its maturity, its intellectual
scope, its creative vision and its – literally – death-defying origins. But to
say he is in a hurry would be to mischaracterise his ultimate ambition and the
deliberate, careful and often lyrical manner in which he presents and
interrogates it. Which is just as well, since his goal for the book is nothing
less than ‘rediscovering New Zealand’s lost direction’.
This would be a daunting task for
even the most venerable and energetic of scholars. Harris is not yet 30. But he
is already widely acknowledged as a brilliant New Zealander with singular
talents. Born in and educated at schools in Wellington he went on to study law,
history and politics at Auckland University before spending 18 months as clerk
to Chief Justice Sian Elias. Oxford University beckoned, interrupted by a
period as a consultant in Helen Clark’s Executive Office at the United Nations
Development Programme. It was here that Harris suffered a medical episode and
received a diagnosis suggesting that he had little time left in a too-short
life.
In the dark and uncertain times
that followed Harris not only hatched his plan for this project, but earned the
rare distinction of a prestigious scholarship at All Souls College, Oxford – a
seven-year period of study – and survived the major surgery which would give
him an entirely new lease on life. The result is both a gift, and a
provocation, that finds generous and stimulating expression in this latest
publication from award-winning publishers Bridget Williams Books.
Suffused with Harris’s own
personality and background, and characterised throughout by his searching
intellect, his empathy and compelling optimism, The New Zealand Project
is a highly original achievement, a new sort of book for a new world ahead. It
is a world full of challenges, particularly acute for his own millennial
generation, laid out with remarkable clarity. Whether it is the future of work,
climate change, the politics of love or other pressing issues of the age,
Harris not only offers his own prescriptions but, critically, challenges his
readers to come up with their own, or join the conversation.
In exploring fresh approaches to
policy and politics, Harris aims to create new and larger discussions about the
future of this country, a project all the more relevant given the geopolitical
context into which it arrives: Trump, Brexit, post-truth politics and a
resurgence of authoritarianism. It is an approach that eschews the strait
jacket of traditional partisan politics. Instead it focuses on the issues and
values upon which New Zealanders can and must find common cause if we, and
future generations, are to navigate the challenges that lie ahead – and
preserve the essence of what it means to belong in Aotearoa.
About
the Author
Max
Harris is currently an Examination Fellow at All Souls College in Oxford. He
completed a Master of Public Policy and Bachelor of Civil Law at the University
of Oxford while on a New Zealand Rhodes Scholarship from 2012–2014, and a
Law/Arts conjoint degree (with Honours in Law) at the University of Auckland
from 2006–2010. Harris worked at the Supreme Court of New Zealand as a clerk
for Chief Justice Elias in 2011–2012.
He has also completed short stints of
work at the South Australian Department of Premier and Cabinet (in early 2008,
as a speechwriting intern), the law firm Russell McVeagh (in late 2008–2009),
the Australian National University in Canberra (as a summer scholar, in late
2009–2010), the American Civil Liberties Union in New York (late 2010–2011),
and Helen Clark’s Executive Office at the United Nations Development Programme
(in July–August 2014).
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