Tu

Tu, the last-born of three brothers, is named after the Māori god of war. Long after the Second World War his niece and nephew, Rimini and Benedict, come to him wanting to understand their family's past, and he gives them the journal he kept as a soldier. Two strands run side by side. One follows the family after they move from the country below Mt Taranaki to Wellington, where the eldest brother, Pita, takes on the role of protector and falls for a young Pākehā woman, Jess. The other is Tu's own journal, begun when he enlists at seventeen, which follows the brothers with the 28th (Māori) Battalion to the fighting for Cassino in Italy. Letters written in the 1960s frame both stories.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

War, Family, Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

New Zealand, Italy, 1940s

First published

2004

Author's age

67 when first published

ISBN

9780143019206 (Penguin Books, New Zealand)

9780824829278 (University of Hawaii Press, United States)

9781775500421 (Huia Publishers, New Zealand)

More

Wikidata