One of Ben's - Maurice Shadbolt

One of Ben's is the lively, often funny, sometimes poignant, story of New Zealand's most distinguished storyteller. This story of his stories may prove to be the best he has told. 

Maurice Shadbolt gives us a personal memoir replete with the ribald and tender, the comic and absurd, everywhere distinguished by the author's clear eye on history and the rich stuff of humanity behind it. 

For it is not just his story. It is also the story of his felonious forebears and robust relatives, a tale that begins with burglar and convict Benjamin Shadbolt's transportation from England in 1845.

Here, too, is Grandfather Ernest and his faltering attempts to carve a farm out of King Country bush and gully; the amazing Aunt Sis, nurse in the Spanish Civil War and mostly benevolent dictator of the Hokianga hospital; peripatetic father Frank and his bumpy allegiance to the Communist Party. 

One of Ben's reveals also Maurice Shadbolt's own early political graspings and literary growing pains, his friendship with the inspirational James K. Baxter and the irrepressible Kevin Ireland, his own meanderings through Eastern and Western Europe, all giving way with real grace and power to ruminations on the shape of one's life and the coming to terms with one's sense of home and of native voice. 

Above all, it is a distinctively New Zealand story. Never has Maurice Shadbolt's narrative talent been on more vivid display. 

Bloomsbury, 1993. First edition hardback with dust jacket. 314 pages. Black and white photographs. 

Condition: secondhand hardback in excellent condition. Dust jacket in very excellent condition. 

**Note: there is also a paperback edition of this book listed on our website.