The Auckland University Press anthology of New Zealand literature /

In using the telltale "our" in their introduction to describe the national literature, Stafford and Williams give evidence that this anthology is directed mainly at New Zealand readers; likewise, the innovative divagation from chronological arrangement is contingent on readers being clued in. Nonetheless, this capacious view of a literature--as represented by, for example, the poetry of Allen Curnow, the fiction of Witi Ihimaera, and the life writing of Sylvia Ashton-Warner--has punched above its weight to contribute to world literature. The Janet Frame estate would not cooperate with the project, and even in a book so large, there are inevitable omissions, e.g., diarist Dennis McEldowney. Yet the anthology includes delights such as William Satchell's displaced young men who "take to digging kauri gum" and Hone Tuwhare's "distant point / where all roads converge." A companion publication focusing on major writers might serve the US academic market better. Yet this volume is a great gift, showing New Zealand literature as an unassuming and democratic field in which the "ordinary nameless faceless persons" of whom C. K. Stead so eloquently speaks can receive their due amid a landscape now beckoning to many world readers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. N. Birns The New School