The Scornful Moon

Sam Holloway, a retired political journalist who calls himself a moralist, tells the story of Wellington in 1935. His brother-in-law James, a severe former cabinet minister, decides to seek his party's nomination for the coming general election, though the family expect him to lose to a younger rival, and Sam and their other brother-in-law, the astronomer Eric, try to talk him out of it. Sam also runs a circle of would-be writers who are writing a novel as a team, one of them an ambitious young poet. Behind the campaign lies a hidden story of blackmail and secrecy, drawn in part from a real scandal of the 1920s, which Sam tells from a careful distance, often breaking off a side story before its end.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Politics, Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

New Zealand, 1935

First published

2003

Author's age

72 when first published

ISBN

9780143018759 (Penguin Books, New Zealand)

9780571221660 (Faber and Faber, United Kingdom)