Stranger than Fiction - The Lanarchs
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The Going West Books and Writers Festival literary weekend “Landfall in Unknown Seas”, looks set to be an intriguing and surprising couple of days. There will be sessions on cooking, rugby, crime, history, art, poetry, science and much more!
The Going West Books and Writers Festival literary weekend “Landfall in Unknown Seas”, looks set to be an intriguing and surprising couple of days. There will be sessions on cooking, rugby, crime, history, art, poetry, science and much more!
One of the most intriguing books being discussed is Owen Marshall’s historical novel, The Larnachs, which draws on the real-life story of William James Mudie Lanarch. William was a merchant baron and politician who spent more than 15 years building and perfecting Lanarch Castle in Dunedin.
The Lanarchs looks beyond the dominating presence of William to examine the love affair between his third wife and his favourite son. Can love ever be its own world, free of morality and judgement and scandal? Graham Beattie will join him at the literary weekend session to explore this saga set in the restrictive world of late nineteenth-century Dunedin.
Owen Marshall has written, or edited, 25 books, the latest being The Larnachs. He has held Fellowships at the universities of Canterbury and Otago, and in Menton, France. He received the ONZM for services to literature, and in 2000 his novel Harlequin Rex won the Montana New Zealand Book Awards Deutz Medal for fiction. In 2003 he was the inaugural recipient of the CNZ Writers’ Fellowship, and he was President of Honour of the New Zealand Society of Authors for 2007/2008. Marshall is an adjunct professor at the University of Canterbury, which awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in 2002.