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Live Bodies
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Brief Description
As a young man in Vienna in the 1930s, Josef Mandl was a member of underground left-wing groups battling the Nazis. In New Zealand during the Second World War, Mandl is judged a communist agitator and interned on Somes Island along with several other Germans and...
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Description
As a young man in Vienna in the 1930s, Josef Mandl was a member of underground left-wing groups battling the Nazis. In New Zealand during the Second World War, Mandl is judged a communist agitator and interned on Somes Island along with several other Germans and Italians. Josef makes two unsuccessful attempts to escape, and in the process discovers Wellington as a place where he might live.
He finds work, masters English, marries Nancy, and begins a new life. He has continuing contact with Willi, a charismatic fellow internee who is a strong anti-fascist and torments Josef for his new respectability.
In his Wadestown house in the 1990s, now a successful businessman, Josef Mandl looks out to Somes Island and brings his past into focus. He visits old friends, encounters Willi—now a pathetic ruin of a man—and ponders why, despite his successes, he feels askew from his times, a little removed by his history.
Live Bodies is also available as an eBook.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780140280296
Publisher: Penguin Group (NZ)
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 16 July 1998
Country: New Zealand
Imprint: Penguin Books (NZ)
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 24.0mm
Width: 132.0mm
Height: 201.0mm
Weight: 262g
Pages: 264
About the Author
Maurice Gee has long been considered one of New Zealand's finest writers. He has written more than thirty books for adults and young adults and has won numerous literary awards, including the UK's James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, the Wattie Award, the Deutz Medal for Fiction, the New Zealand Fiction Award and the New Zealand Children's Book of the Year Award. In 2003 he received an inaugural New Zealand Icon Award and in 2004 he received a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement. Maurice Gee's novels include The Plumb Trilogy, Going West, Prowlers, Live Bodies and The Scornful Moon. He has also written a number of much-loved children's novels, including Under the Mountain, The O Trilogy and The Salt Trilogy. Maurice lives in Nelson, in New Zealand's South Island, with his wife Margareta, and has two daughters and a son.
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