Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
The Book of Fame
This semi-historical novel traces the 1905 All Blacks tour of Europe through the making of fame and the memory of a collective. Friendship, loyalty, and pride gradually change shape over the course of the journey.
Work Information
It follows the birth of global fame through a poetic, experimental voice.
Drawing on a real tour, the novel looks less at results than at how fame changes the people who carry it. Its layered voices bring out the anxiety and solidarity that sit beneath glory.
Review Summaries
-
Many readers praise its poetic, experimental structure and its focus on fame and collective memory, while others feel some distance from it as a sports novel.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Penguin Books
- Published
- 2000-08-31
- Language
- 英語
- ISBN-13
- 9780140296945
- ISBN-10
- 0140296948
- Category
- 洋書/Biographies & Memoirs
This novel is based on the 1905 New Zealand rugby tour of Britain, when the All Blacks achieved unheard of success in thirty-three of their matches, losing only one against Wales. In the country they call 'Home', these unassuming Kiwi men achieve massive public acclaim and become heroes.
Reviews
-
An amazing and delightful book. It his an epic and poetic narration of men of humble origins making history in the rugby field. But the book is mucho more than that, it is poetry and a historical rendering of a group of men and a historical time.
-
Lloyd Jones is a wonderful writer and this book is an insight into a little known pre-World War 1 chapter in our NZ history
-
The Book of Fame grows on you once you get used to the writing style- being more like poetry. It is a wonderful reflection of the time (1905) and these working class New Zealand men going back to what was still considered "the Mother Country" to pit themselves against the English (mostly public school boys) and find they have a game far ahead of what is happening in the rest of the world. It is more about fame than rugby (which i'm not a great fan of) and how these working class tough men cope with it. It is not a book just for people who like sport but will interest anyone who is interested in the idea of fame and how (in our times now) so many people are looking for it while these men in 1905 had no expectations of such a thing and how they manage it when it comes there way.
-
Of course you grow up on the legends of the All Blacks, if you grow up in a rugby-playing nation, but this book both humanises and celebrates them in so much detail. They were superheroes and they were regular blokes out of their element. Reading about their humanness adds to their heroism by contrast. They changed rugby, and their home nation's level of self-expectation... then they went home again. Thoroughly recommend this to anyone with even only a mere passing interest in the foundations of the All Blacks' legend.
-
A very different approach to writing, mixing fact and fiction, every sports fan should read it! An awesome read from a talented author