THE ANTIPODEANS

Three Generations. Two Continents. One Forgotten Secret.

2014Clare and her father travel to Venice from New Zealand. She is fleeing a broken marriage, he is in failing health and wants to return one last time to the place where, as a young man, he spent happy years as a rugby player and coach. While exploring Venice, Clare discovers there is more to her father s motives for returning than she realised and time may be running out for him to put old demons to rest.

1942Joe and Harry, two Kiwi POWs in Italy, manage to escape their captors, largely due to the help of a sympathetic Italian family who shelter them on their farm. Soon they are fighting alongside the partisans in the mountains, but both men have formed a bond with Donatella, the daughter of the family, a bond that will have dramatic repercussions decades later.

The Antipodeans is a novel of epic proportions where families from opposite ends of the earth discover a legacy of love and blood and betrayal.

'Like a Venetian Captain Corelli s Mandolin. You won t want to put it down.' Simon Edge, author of The Hopkins Conundrum

Hugely evocative Sarah Franklin, author of Shelter

Greg McGee's haphazard journey as unlikely writer, rebellious rugby player, ambivalent protestor, lawyer and defendant, mutineer tourist, dilettante coach and incompetent kangaroo culler has taken him from Ponsonby to Paraburdoo, Tapanui to Harlem, Dunedin to Venice and various other T-shirt destinations. During this time he has crossed paths with a diverse cast of characters, from Peter Mahon to Keith Murdoch, Peggy Guggenheim to Duncan Laing, Ken Gray to Billy T. James, Raymond Hawthorne to Bert Potter, not to mention Grizz Wylie, Janet Frame's brother, Pie Madsen's mother, Aussie fortune tellers, Sicilian witches, Vincent van Gogh and any number of writers, actors, producers and other denizens of stage and screen.