Novel
Roads from Home
Dan Davin · 1949
Synopsis
In Invercargill, in Southland, lives the Hogan family, who are Catholic. Through them and their circle, the novel evokes the provincial life of Southland Catholics: young Paddy and his ferret Pompey, Andy Saunders weighing the drawbacks of marriage, the streets of the town and the roads leading out of it, in the rough language of the period. The rest of the plot is not described.
Context
The novel appeared in 1949, four years after a first novel and two years after a book drawn from the war. Its author drew in it on his childhood and youth in Southland, and the book attracted the attention of critics, who then expected a great deal of him. Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press reissued it in 1976 in an edition prepared by Lawrence Jones, with an introduction, notes on the language and three maps of the city.
Who it is for
Never translated into French. New Zealand slang of the thirties abounds in it, and the 1976 edition explains it in notes.
Prizes and reception
Noticed by critics on publication, it is regarded as his best long work and as a milestone of the country's realist tradition.
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