The Parihaka Woman

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I have always loved political opera, in particular Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio. Indeed, inspired by Fidelio, in 1993 I wrote an opera libretto, Erenora, recasting Beethoven’s heroine as a Maori woman.

Sixteen years later, in 2009, I began a collection of novellas called Purity of Ice. Realising that an opera production of Erenora in New Zealand was unlikely to happen, I decided to turn it into one of the novellas but giving the original libretto a preceding context: the extraordinary events of Parihaka and the exile of the prisoners of Parihaka to the South Island.

Sometimes, however, things don’t turn out the way you intend them to. The novella kept on growing as I continued my exploration of the intertextual techniques, multiple narratives and perspectives that I had begun to develop in The Trowenna Sea (2009). In this case, I was particularly fascinated about the possibilities of further acknowledging the boundaries between fiction, history and biography by making visible historical and biographical material and using footnotes. And, of course, there were the intersections with Fidelio to consider.

The novella was still growing when my good friend, agent and mentor, Ray Richards, to whom this book is dedicated, finally suggested that I extract Erenora from the completed collection and publish it as a separate book. It became The Parihaka Woman.