Keri Hulme

Margery Fee (University of British Columbia)
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In 1985, Hulme won the prestigious Booker Prize for her novel

the bone people (1984)

. Its Maori perspective and asexual heroine were unusual, as was its vision of a colonial New Zealand transformed into a postcolonial Aotearoa, where Pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent) and Maori would eat and drink together at the same table. It resonated with another nation-building novel: the 1981 winner, Salman Rushdie’s

Midnight’s Children

similarly imagined an unpartitioned India. Although Hulme has published non-fiction, poetry and stories since—most recently a short story collection,

Stonefish

(2004)--it is the long-unfinished novel “Bait” that her readers are hoping for. Critic Andrew Johnston remarked that perhaps it should be called “Wait”! It now has developed a twin,…

2183 words

Citation: Fee, Margery. "Keri Hulme". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 September 2006; last revised 30 December 2018. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2251, accessed 19 March 2024.]

2251 Keri Hulme 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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