The Singing Whakapapa

What is the truth of history, what are the facts - and how are we to know them?

This powerful novel is the story of John Flatt - missionary agriculturalist, witness to Waharoa’s war of the 1830s against the Arawa, to the murder of the young woman Tarore and to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi - and his great-great-grandson Hugh Grady, who more than a hundred and fifty years later tries to make sense of his own life by exploring all that has gone before. It is a story laced with passion, betrayal and revenge, at many levels, as greed overtakes good intentions and the cloak of history is pulled aside.

Above all, The Singing Whakapapa is a tale for our times - a compelling historical detective story in which the truth is stranger than only fiction, and in which the present becomes a backseat driver to the past. It is C.K. Stead’s best work of fiction for years.