Tonight I went to a book launch for Sacrifice by Joanna Orwin.
The launch was held at the University Book Shop. They put on a good spread, with generous amounts of food and drink.
About 30 people gathered to hear Orwin talk about her new novel.
Orwin started off by saying that the genesis for the novel was a visit to Easter Island. She was struck by the fact that the moai face inland (“inward looking”) rather than out to sea (“outward looking”). This was something I could relate to, having been struck by the same thing myself. She also found Easter Island a sad place, because of the ecological devastation wrought on the island by its inhabitants. This got her thinking about how societies collapse, and about the rise-and-collapse pattern civilizations tend to follow. She did a lot of reading on the subject (“And remember, this was 2008, before the financial collapse.”) She was also inspired by the Rapa Nui people reinventing themselves as a Polynesian society.
She wrote the book while on a six-month residency at Otago University in 2009. It is set in a post-apocalyptic NZ and Pacific. One part of the book involves an ocean voyage undertaken in a moki – a Maori reed raft. While researching the subject she was having trouble finding anyone who knew much about mokis. A chance conversation revealed the existence of a film shot fifteen years before showing a kaumatua actually building one on the shore at Moeraki. She managed to track down the footage through a search engine she had access to as part of her residency. While claiming to be a technophobe, she was clearly chuffed with how easy it was to locate such resources using computers.
The book sounds interesting, and I’m looking forward to reading it.
