Aucklanders

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In the tradition of James Joyce's </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Dubliners</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Murray Edmond brings us </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Aucklanders</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> short stories that celebrate lives lived in New Zealand's biggest city. Through different time-settings and narrative styles the tales are variously entertaining funny satirical reflective and tragic. Sometimes they are a little gruesome or absurd. Yet these Aucklanders often feel oddly familiar. Among them we encounter a scared RSA waiter a Zen sensei who keeps his followers guessing a shy boy who breaks a neighbour's hothouse with his shanghai slingshot a famous drunken artist with a tortured legacy and a delivery driver with a side hustle. The stories variously evoke the hopeful exuberance of youth and love the pain of heartbreak and loss and the ambient excitement of a high school play about to begin.</span></p>