Stonedogs is the first novel by New Zealand writer Craig Marriner. It was published in 2001 and has won a Montana New Zealand Book Award. The book has been described as "a kind of A Clockwork Orange -meets- Once Were Warriors as imagined by Irvine Welsh". [1] In 2003, the film rights were sold to Australian production company Mushroom Pictures, but no film has eventuated.
Stonedogs is structurally unusual; some text takes the form of a play with stage directions, and there are sudden shifts from narrator's voice to outside observer. Pages of inner narrative are italicised. For Marriner, "It was important to do something that would be seen as innovative in terms of structure and format, to come up with mediums which are slightly alternative to what's been done. I saw devices which hadn't been used and I couldn't see why they hadn't." [1] Stonedogs received critical acclaim, winning the Deutz Medal for Fiction in 2002 [2] in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. [3]
The novel deals with issues such as alienation, social decay, drug use and New Zealand gang culture, as well as political and environmental issues. Speaking of the novel, Marriner told an interviewer, "I've been pretty disillusioned with mainstream society for a while, I just don't see a future in it. And I've been moving in working-class circles and watching the quiet desperation everyone lives their lives through. So the novel comes from there, and questions where we're going environmentally and politically." [1] There are strong left-wing political themes expressed; Marriner has cited leftists such as Noam Chomsky, [3] Robert Fisk and Leon Trotsky as influences. [4]
The story revolves around the protagonist, Gator, an unemployed young adult with anti-capitalist and neo-Nietzschean philosophies, and his friends in Rotorua. All are involved in recreational drug use. After they try to purchase LSD from members of the fictional gang "The Rabble", Gator causes an incident and makes an enemy in the leader of the gang chapter. After a tip-off from his friend Steve, whose cousin is a gang prospect, Gator and the others plan to steal the harvest of the gang's marijuana crop. They drive their Holden to Northland and after unplanned events take place attempt to sell their haul to a gang of Auckland skinheads, later running into trouble with a corrupt police officer.
A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Nadsat", which takes its name from the Russian suffix that is equivalent to '-teen' in English. According to Burgess, it was a jeu d'esprit written in just three weeks.
Murder Must Advertise is a 1933 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the eighth in her series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. Most of the action of the novel takes place in an advertising agency, a setting with which Sayers was familiar as she had herself worked as an advertising copywriter until 1931.
The Monkey Wrench Gang is a novel written by American author Edward Abbey (1927–1989), published in 1975.
Once Were Warriors is New Zealand author Alan Duff's bestselling first novel, published in 1990. It tells the story of an urban Māori family, the Hekes, and portrays the reality of domestic violence in New Zealand. It was the basis of a 1994 film of the same title, directed by Lee Tamahori and starring Rena Owen and Temuera Morrison, which made its U.S. premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival. The novel was followed by two sequels, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (1996) and Jake's Long Shadow (2002).
The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are literary awards presented annually in New Zealand. The awards began in 1996 as the merger of two literary awards events: the New Zealand Book Awards, which ran from 1976 to 1995, and the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards, which ran from 1968 to 1995.
A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 dystopian crime film adapted, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It employs disturbing, violent images to comment on psychiatry, juvenile delinquency, youth gangs, and other social, political, and economic subjects in a dystopian near-future Britain.
Alan Duff is a New Zealand novelist and newspaper columnist. He is best known as the author of the novel Once Were Warriors (1990), which was made into a film of the same name in 1994.
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Craig Marriner is a novelist from Rotorua, New Zealand. He is best known for his award-winning first novel Stonedogs (2001).
There are numerous gangs in New Zealand, of varying criminality, organisation and ethnicity, including outlaw motorcycle gangs, street gangs and ethnically based gangs. A chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle club was formed in Auckland in 1961, the first Hells Angels chapter outside the US. Soon after, the Mongrel Mob formed in Hastings and Wellington, developing into a predominantly Māori and Pacific Islander gang, and having the largest membership in the country. Through the 1960s and 1970s other outlaw motorcycle clubs and ethnically based gangs formed, including another predominantly Māori gang, Black Power, which grew to rival the Mongrel Mob.
Rotorua Boys' High School is a state school educating boys from Year 9 to Year 13. It is situated just outside the Rotorua CBD at the intersection of Old Taupo Road and Pukuatua Street in Rotorua, New Zealand.
Eleanor Catton is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter. Born in Canada, Catton moved to New Zealand as a child and grew up in Christchurch. She completed a Master's degree in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her award-winning debut novel, The Rehearsal, written as her Master's thesis, was published in 2008, and has been adapted into a 2016 film of the same name. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Man Booker Prize, making Catton the youngest author ever to win the prize and only the second New Zealander. It was subsequently adapted into a television miniseries, with Catton as screenwriter.
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