Beyond Borders: New Zealand Literature in the Global Marketplace

This book examines the global/local intersections and tensions at play in the literary production from Aotearoa New Zealand through its engagement in the global marketplace.

Combining postcolonial and world literature methodologies contributors chart the global relocation of national culture from the nineteenth century to the present exploring what ＂New Zealand literature＂ means in different creative, teaching, and publishing contexts. They identify ongoing global entanglements with local identities and tensions between national and post-national literary discourses, considering Aotearoa New Zealand’s history as a white settler colony and its status as a bicultural nation and a key player in the Asia-Pacific region, active on the global stage. Topics and authors include: Stefanie Herades on colonial New Zealand literature and the global marketplace; Claudia Marquis on David Hare’s ＂Aotearoa series＂ as exotic reading for adolescents; Paloma Fresno-Calleja on the exoticizing landscape novels of Sarah Lark; James Wenley on Indian Ink Theatre company as hybrid export; Janet M. Wilson on the globalization of the New Zealand short story; Chris Prentice on pedagogic articulations of New Zealand literature; Leonie John on the challenges of teaching Māori literature in Germany; Dieter Riemenschneider on New Zealand literature at the Frankfurt Book Fair; Paula Morris on Commonwealth writers and the Booker Prize; Selina Tusitala Marsh on contemporary Pasifika poetry; and Chris Miller on the afterlife of Allen Curnow.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

Paloma Fresno-Calleja is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of the Balearic Islands, Spain, where she teaches postcolonial literatures. She specialises in the postcolonial literatures of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific region, on which she has published widely.

Janet M. Wilson is Emerita Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Northampton, UK. She has published widely on the literary and visual cultures of Aotearoa New Zealand and has a research interest in diasporic, transnational writing. She is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.