Booker Prize-winning Novelist Keri Hulme Dead at 74

Varieties

December 28th, 6:46am

Asharq Al-Awsat

Novelist Keri Hulme, second from right, poses with Spiral Publishing collective members Miriama Evans, left, Marian Evans and Irihapeti Ramsden, right, in Wellington, New Zealand on July 16, 1984. Hulme, the New Zealander whose 1984 novel The Bone People won the Man Booker Prize died on Monday, Dec. 27, 2021. She was 74. (NZME via AP)

Keri Hulme, the New Zealander whose 1984 novel The Bone People won the Man Booker Prize, has died. She was 74. Family members confirmed Hulme died Monday morning at Waimate on New Zealand´s South Island. They did not specify a cause. Hulme worked as a tobacco picker, dropped out of law school and was a charity worker before becoming an unusual literary star when The Bone People, her first novel, won one of fiction´s greatest prizes. The novel was rejected by several publishers before being picked up by the obscure publisher Spiral, a New Zealand feminist collective. According to The Associated Press, Hulme took almost 20 years to produce The Bone People which drew on her indigenous Maori and Scottish heritage, weaving themes of personal and cultural isolation. She later shunned the spotlight. "There were stories of her being this literary giant," Hulme´s nephew Matthew Salmons told the New Zealand news website Stuff. "It wasn´t really something that she discussed. "It was never about fame for her. She´s always been a storyteller. It was never about the glitz and glam(or), she just had stories to share."

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3382451/booker-prize-winning-novelist-keri-hulme-dead-74