Books
The General and the Nightingale
Dan Davin's War Stories
Edited by Janet WilsonThe General and the Nightingale brings together 20 of Dan Davin's war stories, some drawn from his war diaries, and loosely based on his experiences as “a wartime scholar-soldier” and those of his fellow soldiers in the British and New Zealand armies. They yield an unparalleled insight into the Kiwi or Anzac soldier at war during the Mediterranean and African desert campaigns of World War II.
Davin was a University of Otago alumnus and Rhodes Scholar, and had recently completed a degree at Oxford when he enlisted in the British Army in 1939. After receiving a commission in 1940 he transferred to the New Zealand forces. He saw active service in Greece and North Africa, and rose to become General Freyberg's intelligence officer in the Italian campaign.
The General and the Nightingale updates an earlier collection of Davin's war stories published in 1986 as The Salamander and the Fire and long out of print.
The Gorse Blooms Pale
Dan Davin's Southland Stories
Edited by Janet WilsonThe companion volume to The General and the Nightingale, The Gorse Blooms Pale reissues 26 stories and a selection of poems reflecting Davin's experiences while growing up in a working-class Irish–New Zealand family in Southland.
Comic, haunting, poetic and profound, the stories have a regional flavour, capturing the character of a close-knit rural community and its post-British social relationships and tribulations, with a flair equal to such other New Zealand writers as Sargeson, Frame, Middleton or Marshall.
Janet Wilson is Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Northampton, UK, and formerly taught at the University of Otago. She has published widely on New Zealand postcolonial/diaspora writers.
For further information:
Otago University Press
otago.ac.nz/press
university.press@otago.ac.nz
Books by Otago alumni
Tom Lawn: Mystery Forward, A Life in Business and Rugby,
by Mark Pirie, Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, 2018.
Indigenous Pacific Approaches to Climate Change: Pacific Island Countries,
by Jenny Bryant-Tokalau, Palgrave MacMillan, August 2018.
Mind that Child,
by Simon Rowley, Penguin Random House, 2018.
The Armenians of Penang,
by Nadia H. Wright, Entrepot Publishing (Penang), November 2018.
Electrimotive: Music Poems,
by Mark Pirie, Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, December 2018.
A Frozen Destiny,
by Alan Mundle, Amazon Kindle.
Athlete Learning in Elite Sport: A Cultural Framework,
edited by Natalie Barker-Ruchti, Routledge, February 2019.
The Gulf Between,
by Maxine Alterio, Penguin Random House, April 2019.
Soil Clays: Linking Geology, Biology, Agriculture and the Environment,
by G. Jock Churchman and Bruce Velde, Taylor & Francis, Boca Raton, June 2019.
A Good Joke: The Life and Crimes of Notorious New Zealand Art Forger Karl Sim,
by Ian Dougherty, Saddle Hill Press, June 2019.
Shell Shock Doctors: Neuropsychiatry in the Trenches 1914-18,
by A.D.(Sandy) Macleod, Cambridge Scholars Publishers, 2019.
The Armenians of Singapore: a Short History,
by Nadia H. Wright, Entrepot Publishing (Penang), July 2019.
My Life in Public health: A Memoir from the Frontlines of Global Disease Eradication, Children's Health and Ending Smoking,
by Dr Murray Laugesen, foreword by Rt Hon. Helen Clark, Health New Zealand, September 2019.
Sustainable Development Goals: Harnessing Business to Achieve the SDGs through Finance, Technology and Law Reform,
by Julia Walker, Alma Pekmezovic, Gordon Walker, Wiley UK, September 2019.
Inequality and Energy: How Extremes of Wealth and Poverty in High Income Countries Affect CO2 Emissions and Access to Energy,
edited by Ray Galvin, Elsevier, October 2019.
Professional Ethics in Obstetrics and Gynecology,
by John Cloverdale, Laurence McCullough and Frank Chervenack, Cambridge University Press, January 2020.
David Sheppard Batting for the Poor: The Authorised Biography of the Celebrated Cricketer and Bishop,
by Andrew Bradstock, foreword by Desmond Tutu, SPCK (UK), November 2019.
An Alien Helped me with My Homework,
by Lisa Smith and Kimberley Arcand, Stillwater River Publications, January 2020.
Alumni: if you have recently published a book please email mag.editor@otago.ac.nz