The Maori and the Pakeha in C. K. Stead's novel Talking about O'Dwyer

Abstract

The article focuses on a recent novel by the contemporary New Zealand author C.K. Stead, Talking about O'Dwyer. It represents an indictment of war per se, war as a collective madness and its consequences for the life destinies of every single individual caught in it. The Second World War and the independence war in Croatia in the 1990s are minutely described and juxtaposed in this work: both brought to the people, as all wars, suffering and death and have radically changed and marked their lives and relationships. C.K. Stead writes about four locales in very different time periods, New Zealand, Oxford, and especially Croatia and Greece, where the two wars that affect the lives of the protagonists took place.