Bug Week

A collection of stories that travels from Wellington in the 1960s to a German apartment block after the end of Communism. A science educator, living amid household mayhem, grows obsessed with Nordic furniture and fine glassware; office slackers drift into a partner-swapping party during the Muldoon years; an odour nobody can trace creeps from flat to flat. Other voices belong to a small girl, a desperate ex, a jealous sister, a melancholy madam and a toroa, an albatross who takes the stage when the microphone is open to all. Running through the book are anger, unease, death, male entitlement and the strangeness hidden in ordinary days.

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About the book

Form

Short stories

Set in

New Zealand, Germany

First published

2020

Author's age

38 when first published

ISBN

9781776563050 (Victoria University Press, New Zealand)