Typically Duff exaggerates the gap between these two worlds. Plush Trambert house in Once Were Warriors and by Sonny's awed inspection of the Harland mansion in One Night Out Stealing. In the early novels, Duff's politically incorrect views are implied by Grace Heke's excursions from her Pine Block ghetto to gaze on the Conversely, he is wont to express contempt for many aspects of traditional Maori culture -though there have been signs recently of some softening in his attitudes. Putting into practice the dreams of Beth Heke (in the opening pages of Once Were Warriors ) and Tekapo (in the closing pages of Both Sides of the Moon ), Duff has personally instigated a successful campaign to get books into every underprivileged Maori household. In his syndicated newspaper articles, his autobiography ( Out of the Mist and Steam ), and his book-length survey of Maoridom ( Maori: The Crisis and the Challenge ), he has stressed the need for Maori to embrace orthodox Western education and an ethic of self-knowledge and self-help. But the violent, drunken underworld of Once Were Warriors and One Night Out Stealing makes the cityscapes of Grace and Ihimaera look positively genteel.ĭuff's formula for resolving the problems of the urban Maori likewise contrasts very sharply with the emphasis on traditional communal values in most Maori writing.

Like Witi Ihimaera and Patricia Grace, he focuses on the debilitating effect urban life has had on Maori. Main influence: Contemporary American, Faulkner, Selby Jr., Doctorow, Gurganis, Styron.* * *Īlan Duff is the enfant terrible of contemporary Maori writers. Auckland, Auckland University Press, 1998. Writing along Broken Lines: Violence and Ethnicity in Contemporary Maori Fiction by Otto Heim. Auckland, Tandem Press, 1999.* Film Adaptations: What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? Auckland, Vintage, 1996.īoth Sides of the Moon. Auckland, Tandem Press, 1991 Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1992. Auckland, Tandem Press, 1990 Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1994 London, Random House, 1995. Agent: William Morris Agency, 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10019, U.S.A.

Awards: PEN Best First Book award, 1991 best screenplay, for What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?, New Zealand Film Awards, 1999. Family: Married Joanna Harper two sons and three daughters.

Out of the Mist and Steam by Alan Duff