Chappy

Daniel grew up rich and adrift in Switzerland. At twenty-one, after he crashes a car on purpose, his parents send him to his family in New Zealand. There he records the stories of his Māori grandmother Oriwia and her brother Aki, a former merchant seaman, about Daniel's Japanese grandfather Chappy, a stowaway whom Aki took in before the war. The family cared for him until he recovered, he learned to speak Māori, and Oriwia married him. When war came, Chappy was an enemy alien, and he fled and hid to keep suspicion away from his daughters. Told across several decades and moving between New Zealand, Japan and Hawaii, the novel is both a love story and a family portrait, about racial intolerance, clashing cultures and the wish to belong.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family, Love, Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

New Zealand, Japan, United States

First published

2015

Author's age

78 when first published

ISBN

9780143572398 (Penguin, New Zealand)