MAORI BOY by Witi Ihimaera

NZ national treasure, consummate story teller, weaver of myth and reality, deeply in touch with his inner soul and able to put so eloquently into words the richness of his imagination, Witi has begun telling his own story. And what a story it is. This is the first of three memoirs Witi has written about his life, covering his first sixteen years. It is a joy to read, a privilege to be granted entry into such an intricate, unique and personal family history.

His own personal story is told in parallel to the story of his origins - his whakapapa - where he came from, who came before him shaping him into the boy and man. He goes as far back as the first stories told by Maori about the origins of the world, the gods, how the land of Aotearoa came to be, how his forbears sailed from Hawaikii some centuries ago, the later arrival of the white man, the NZ wars, the two world wars - almost a potted history of New Zealand itself.

It is all part of him learning about his self, where he came from, what and who has made him, with much of the story telling revolving around his four grandparents and the incredibly strong influence they directly or indirectly wielded on the young Witi. Witi himself becomes an independent young lad, well able to stand up for himself in his rural East Coast upbringing. Money was tight, families large, jobs often hard to come by but above all they had pride and self-belief, coming from the strong and tight-knit connections within the extended family structure.

As shown in his early works - Pounamu Pounamu, Whanau and Tangi - he has told many stories drawn from his rich upbringing, and the reader can easily see where the ideas, and stories within his published works come from. The novel  The Whale Rider comes from the local story of Paikea, an ancestor who came from Hawaiki, so called because a whale helped him escape an assassination attempt by his half brother.

Effortlessly weaving the distant past with the more recent past of the last couple of hundred years  with Witi's own early life, this is a tale of considerable imagination, a childhood that while not idyllic  and at times horrible, has given us this special disarmingly honest and humble man who seems to glide between reality and fantasy, gifting us with truly beautiful writing and story telling.