Winner of the international First Pages Prize and shortlisted for the 2020 NZSA Heritage Literary Award.
Two young women, a generation apart, travel to opposite sides of the world on fraught journeys of self-discovery.
1958: Gabrijela yearns to escape the confines of bleak post-war Yugoslavia and her tiny fishing community, but never imagines she will be exiled to New Zealand — a new immigrant sent to housekeep for the mysterious and surly Roko, clutching a secret she dare not reveal.
1989: Luisa, Gabrijela’s daughter, departs on her own covert quest, determined to unpick the family’s past. But not all decisions are equal and amid Yugoslavia’s brewing civil unrest, Luisa’s journey confronts her with culture shocks and dark encounters of her own.
Rosetta Allan writes in the Aotearoa Review of Books, ‘PJ McKay’s debut novel opens in 1958, in a sardine factory in Yugoslavia – a scene so confident and immersive that U.K. author Sebastian Faulks selected The Telling Time as the winner of this year’s international First Pages Prize.’
More reviews at PJ McKay Author.
