A Better Place

People in the district would often say Roy Mitchell was not quite the same after he come back from the war. There was a twin brother, Tony. Killed on Crete in 1941.

The hut he built when he returned was on a bit of flat ground above the Mangawhero Creek. He called it his whare. Corrugated-iron chimney on the south wall. Black maire firewood cut and stacked on the veranda. The kennels were north-facing with dry folded sacks for the dogs to sleep on.

In 1942, Roy had driven seventy-five miles through the North African desert to see a litter of ten pups. Just to see them. Someone from the 5th Field Artillery had told him about them. Drove back to the New Zealand lines after that.

From Stephen Daisley, winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award (Australia) for Traitor and New Zealand’s Ockham Prize for Coming Rain, a new novel of brothers at war. Beautifully written, brutal, tender and visceral, A Better Place is about art and violence, and love in its many forms.