Overview

An eagle, and its place in our history. The legend of Pouakai, aka the extinct Haast's Eagle, takes Peter Walker on a journey from an 1860s Canterbury sheep run to a deep cave near Karamea as he learns the story of the mighty hunter that inhabited a peak in the foothills of the Southern Alps. Was it the same creature as The Rukh of Arabic legends? And, if so, was that evidence that in the twelfth century Arabic and Chinese explorers ventured as far as the South Pacific, saw Pouakai, and traded with Maori?From Kai Tahu's fatal encounter with colonisation to the glories of tenth century Baghdad and ceremonies at the great Tahitian marae Taputapuatea, Hard by the Cloud House is a heady, powerful and seductive mix of history, memoir, science and myth, crafted by an esteemed writer. Creative non-fiction at its best.

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9781991016713

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‘This might be a heady, occasionally breathless ride, but by the book’s final paragraph, you are also left slightly breathless, exhilarated and ultimately beguiled by what you have discovered in this cabinet of curiosities’ — Chris Moore, New Zealand Listener

Author Information

Peter Walker grew up in Christchurch and began his writing career as a journalist in Wellington and then Sydney. He moved to London in 1986 and joined The Independent and later the Independent on Sunday where he was Foreign Editor. He also wrote for the Literary Review, the Financial Times books pages and Granta. He is the author of the historical memoir The Fox Boy (Bloomsbury, 2001), set in Taranaki, and his first novel The Courier’s Tale (Bloomsbury, 2010), set in Italy and the court of Henry VIII. In 2011 he was a Randell Cottage fellow in Wellington and began another novel, Some Here Among Us (Bloomsbury, 2015). He now lives on an orange orchard near Ninety Mile Beach in the Far North.

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