Award Winning novel - Rangatira by Paula Morris

Rangatira has won the Fiction Category Award in the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards. This book has been recently purchased and makes an interesting historical read as well as being suitable for Level 2 wide reading.

Auckland, June 1886.

Ngati Wai chief Paratene Te Manu spends long sessions, over three long days, having his portrait painted by the Bohemian painter Gottfried Lindauer. Hearing of Lindauer's planned trip to England reminds him of his own journey there, twenty years earlier, with a party of northern rangatira. As he sits for Lindauer, Paratene retreats deeper and deeper into the past, from the triumphs in London and their meetings with royalty to the disintegration of the visit into poverty, mistrust, and humiliation. (Source www.penguin.co.au)