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Naumai
selected stories, memoir and poems
by John Moffatt

A modest writer with a great gift for storytelling and depicting place, time and people.
He tino taonga, tenei kaituhituhi, ki tana iwi, ki ana hoa katoa hoki.

"When I own a home of my own, I will call it Naumai," says John Moffatt, despite Koro Potete’s warning, "No, no, don’t do that, you’ll have all the friends and relations calling in." "And so it proved," writes John, "but was not a problem." The stories and poems in this volume invite us into the capacious world of John’s imagination, where a living statue balances on its thumb, a snail and a blackbird debate, Maori warriors fight to the death and beyond, patients line up for bloodletting, wounded toes go "Yeowh! all the way home," ghosts of grandmothers, trains and murderers appear, and black wood stoves dispense warmth in dark houses where "…the floured apron stands monumental above veined legs in a cloud of savoury steam, mince, onions, the smell of childhood’s Julys," and much else probable and improbable. 

John Moffatt, born in 1927, called himself ‘A contemporary of the Model T Ford’. A member of the Horowhenua Writers’ Group from its formation in 1982 until his death in November 2006, he was published by Huia Publishers, inter alia.

TITLE               Naumai
AUTHOR         John Moffatt
PUBLISHED    2006
CATEGORY    Selected short stories and poems
FORMAT         Paperback
EXTENT           A5, 180 pages
ISBN                978-0-473-12227-0
PRICE              NZ  $25

    Contact::                                 Karen Peterson Butterworth 
                                                     P.O. Box 211,   Otaki
                                                     Email:   karenpetbut@xtra.co.nz

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