How to Paint a Nude

Every Tuesday in 2011 an artist nicknamed Sambo meets Gregor Kerensky at a café by Christchurch's old university buildings. Gregor is a painter who escaped Lukashenko's Belarus hoping New Zealand would let him work freely, and he proposes a pact: each man will offer the other a moment of his life, and each must truly listen. Their talk ranges over what Art is and what it is for, women and romance, political repression and the landowners and industries fouling Canterbury's water. Gregor tells Sambo he has become a mere decorator who no longer wants to fight for anything, and the meetings push the older man to rediscover his purpose, while the refugee tires of the country's polite brand of tyranny. The author's own drawings accompany the text.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Autofiction, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

New Zealand, 2011

First published

2025 by Ugly Hill Press

ISBN

9781067086527 (Ugly Hill Press, New Zealand)