Click here to visit Rebecca's interview on RNZ Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan June 21
OCKHAM NZ BOOK AWARDS 2022, Finalist, Jann Medicott Acorn Price for Fiction
Click here to visit 2022 Ockham NZ Book Awards Shortlist
Click here to visit 2022 Ockham Fiction Sampler
"The modern world is too much for me. I feel like I'm George of the Jungle." -Greta
"At the moment, for personal reasons, I don't like reading things about people being in love with each other."-Valdin
Valdin is still in love with his ex-boyfriend Xabi, who used to drive around Auckland in a ute but now drives around Buenos Aires in one. Greta is in love with her fellow English tutor Holly, who doesn't know how to pronounce Greta's surname, Vladisavljevic, properly. From their Auckland apartment, brother and sister must navigate the intricate paths of modern romance as well as weather the small storms of their eccentric Maori-Russian-Catalonian family.
This beguiling and hilarious novel by Adam Foundation Prize winner Rebecca K Reilly owes as much to Shakespeare as it does to Tinder.
Set in a world that is deeply familiar (but also a bit sexier and more stylish than the real one), Greta and Valdin will speak to anyone who has had their heart broken, or has decided that they don't want to be a physicist anymore, or has wondered about all of the things they don't know about their family.
Rebecca K Reilly (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Wai) is a writer from Tāmaki Makaurau. Greta & Valdin won the Hubert Church Prize for Best First Book, and was published by Simon & Schuster (US) and Penguin (UK) in 2024.
Cover design: Sarah Wilkins
Modern Contemporary Fiction
Paperback
Rebecca K Reilly
352 pages