Essential New Zealand Short Stories

Essential NZ Stories is a companion volume to Essential NZ Poems, edited by Edmond and Sewell, and contains 45 arresting and significant stories spanning 80 years, ranging from Katherine Mansfield and Frank Sargeson to Emily Perkins and Chad Taylor. The collection shows why short fiction has been so important in the development of our literature, and why it continues to appeal to a wide readership.The stories are not chosen as social documents, and the relationship between life in a given time and place, and the art which arises from it, is too subtle to be satisfactorily captured by the analogy of a mirror. Nevertheless, writers are always influenced by their social and physical environments, and the stories provide tangential, personalised glimpses of the journey we make as a nation.