John Mulgan was een Nieuw-Zeelandse journalist, schrijver en redacteur. Zijn literaire werk kenmerkt zich door scherpe observatie en een inzichtelijke kijk op de menselijke natuur. In zijn teksten verkent hij vaak de complexiteit van interpersoonlijke relaties en de morele dilemma's waarmee personages worden geconfronteerd. Zijn stijl is beknopt maar toch suggestief, waardoor lezers zich diep in de weergegeven wereld kunnen onderdompelen.
A superb reference for readers of English literature, this abridgement of Harvey's Oxford Companion to English Literature is now in its second edition, with revisions based on the fourth edition of the Companion. All of Harvey's principal entries on authors, works and mythological and historical subjects are included in abbreviated form--as well as brief reference notes and articles on general literary topics and terms such as Anglo-Saxon Literature, Blank Verse, and Romantic Revival.
Man Alone is one of the foundation stones of New Zealand literature. Almost all copies of the first edition, published in England in 1939, were destroyed in the Blitz. When it was republished in New Zealand in 1949, after the author's suicide in Cairo in 1945, the publisher Paul's Book Arcade made a number of changes for unknown reasons. This edition restores John Mulgan's original text for the first time. Johnson, an English WWI veteran, comes to New Zealand to find a new life. In Auckland he is caught up in the Great Depression riots, and heads south to the central North Island, where he work as a farm hand. An affair with his boss's wife and the accidental killing of his boss cause him to flee across rough hill country, and by the end of the novel he is contemplating leaving the country to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Man Alone is a portrait of an existential loner, and a testament to the necessity of comradeship in times of hardship.