Once Were Warriors

Once Were Warriors is Alan Duff's harrowing vision of his country's indigenous people two hundred years after the English conquest. In prose that is both raw and compelling, it tells the story of Beth Heke, a Maori woman struggling to keep her family from falling apart, despite the squalor and violence of the housing projects in which they live. Conveying both the rich textures of Maori tradition and the wounds left by its absence, Once Were Warriors is a masterpiece of unblinking realism, irresistible energy, and great sorrow.

Alan Duff was born in 1950 and lives with his wife and four children in Havelock North, New Zealand. He has published the novels Once Were Warriors and One Night Out Stealing; a novella, State Ward; and a work of nonfiction, Maori: The Crisis and the Challenge. His novel Once Were Warriors won the PEN Best First Book for Fiction Award and was made into an internationally acclaimed film, for which Duff wrote the original screenplay.