Two Books Launched By Vaughan Rapatahana

RAPTAHANA IS A LONG-TERM RESIDENT IN HONG KONG, BORN & BRED IN AOTEAROA-NEW ZEALAND AND WITH STRONG TIES TO PHILIPPINES, P.R. CHINA AND OTHER ASIAN VISTA.

TWO BOOKS – TOA a novel china as kafka (Phoenix Edition) – a further collection of poetry.

TOA: A NOVEL

“BEHIND THE TATTOOED FACE, A STRANGER STANDS.
HE OWNS THE EARTH. HE IS WHITE.”

Vaughan Rapatahana’s first novel is a rollicking road trip through the ‘skinny country’ where a guerilla war is raging between Indigenous rebels and a Pākehā government controlled by foreign interests. Redneck assassins, secret-agents, biker gangs and feminist groups all cross paths as Mahon, an ex-university philosophy lecturer, and his gun ‘Molly’ blast their way across the country in a black Mark IV.

While homage is paid to Vaughan Rapatahana’s existential and post-modern heroes, the voice is indubitably his own: sardonic, hectic, eclectic, at times laugh-out-loud funny and always deliciously subversive. — James Norcliffe (Robert Burns Fellow)

china as kafka: a further collection of poetry

“Rapatahana’s poems make significant patterns out of the randomness of life’s events and give succinct and effective voice to the peculiarly modern condition of the global nomad at once home everywhere and home nowhere…”
~ David Eggleton, Editor of Landfall, Aotearoa-New Zealand

“Brilliant, poignant, sometimes surreal images and passages abound…This collection is obviously a huge and ambitious piece of work...”
~ Patricia Prime, Reviewer for Takahe, Aotearoa-New Zealand

“Rapatahana’s unique techniques are particularly effective…Rapatahana forces readers to mull each line carefully…”
~ Michael Tsang, Reviewer for Asian Cha, Hong Kong

“We should look forward to the next book from this difficult and important poet.”
~ Scott Hamilton, Reading the Maps blogspot.

ENDS

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