Release date: 23rd March 2021

All to Blazes is a selection of the finest stories of Frank Sargeson (1903 – 1982). Sargeson was the first to capture the voice of New Zealand English in prose, the first to blend unblinking realism with radical modernism, and the first to undercut the stereotypes of working-class manhood with something much more nuanced and daring.

He succeeded in finding, as novelist Patrick Evans wrote, ‘a voice for all the things that were bottled up by a deeply repressed, conservative, narrow-minded society caught in the tricky business of white colonization – bottled up, but still determining who we were and how we behaved.’

Sargeson’s stories capture the everyday life of ordinary New Zealanders at home, at work, and in search of both. Originally published between 1935 and 1966, they are still fresh, still fizzing with linguistic energy, and still able to shock as well as delight.