Ned and Katina: A True Love Story
  • Published: 28 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9780143007401
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $41.00
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Ned and Katina: A True Love Story

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A TRUE STORY OF LOVE IN WARTIME AND IN PEACE.
In Crete during the Second World War a wounded Maori Battalion soldier and a young Cretan woman fall in love when the young infantryman is sheltered by her family.
After marrying in Crete, Ned and Katina come back to live in New Zealand, settling in the Far North. They live a long, rich and happy life together, raising a family and involving themselves in community affairs there and in the Wellington region. Ned dies in 1987, Katina in 1996.
Years later, the whanau of Ned and Katina approached writer Patricia Grace to compile their parents' story. Ned & Katina is the result. This warm, beautifully written true story is impossible to put down.
Also available as an eBook
  • Published: 28 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9780143007401
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $41.00
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Patricia Grace

Patricia Grace is one of New Zealand’s most prominent and celebrated Maori fiction authors and a figurehead of modern New Zealand literature. She garnered initial acclaim in the 1970s with her collection of short stories entitled Waiariki (1975) — the first published book by a Maori woman in New Zealand. She has published six novels and seven short story collections, as well as a number of books for children and a work of non-fiction. She won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction for Potiki in 1987, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2001 with Dogside Story, which also won the 2001 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Prize. Her children’s story The Kuia and the Spider won the New Zealand Picture Book of the Year in 1982.

portrait photo of Patricia Grace

Also by Patricia Grace

Bird Child and Other Stories
Potiki
Cousins
Collected Stories: Patricia Grace
Small Holes in the Silence
Waiariki
Baby No-eyes
See all

Praise for Ned and Katina: A True Love Story

'This is an unusual love story, to be savoured.' Clarke Isaacs, Otago Daily Times

PRH, PRH

'Impeccably researched and beautifully written, this book will be of very wide general appeal.' Katherine Gillard, Dominion Post Weekend

PRH, PRH

'...the story Grace tells is far more that of a handsome young Maori soldier and his love, passionately reciprocated, for the daughter of the family who sheltered him from the Germans. It is the story of a love affair between two cultures - Maori and Cretan.' Elspeth Sandys, NZ Listener

PRH, PRH

'In this meticulously researched, deeply moving book, Grace has succeeding in telling a story at once personal and profound. If occasionally the novelist can be seen at work, this is no bad thing. Ned & Katina is a triumph.' Espeth Sandys, NZ Listener

PRH, PRH

'...this is the finest local biography I have read this year.' Iain Sharp, Metro

PRH, PRH

'It is a wonderful account of long, rich and, for the most part, happy lives, simply but beautifully told. Grace, in her first foray into non-fiction, does the story full justice. Ned and Katina would be pleased.' Warwick Roger, North & South

PRH, PRH