Legacy

Seventeen-year-old Riki is worried about school and the future, but mostly about his girlfriend, who has suddenly stopped texting him. But on his way to see her, he’s hit by a bus and his life radically changes. Riki wakes up one hundred years earlier in Egypt, in 1915, and finds he’s living through his great-great-grandfather’s experiences in the Māori Contingent. At the same time that Riki tries to make sense of what’s happening and find a way home, we read transcripts of interviews Riki’s great-great-grandfather gave in 1975 about his experiences in this war and its impact on their family. Gradually we realise the fates of Riki and his great-great-grandfather are intertwined.

• Whiti Hereaka, Author

  Whiti Hereaka (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa, Ngāti Whakaue, Tūhourangi, Pākehā) is an award-winning novelist and playwright. She holds a Master’s in Creative Writing (Scriptwriting) from the International Institute of Modern Letters. She is the author of three novels: The Graphologist’s Apprentice, and the award-winning YA novels Bugs and Legacy. In 2019, Legacy won the New Zealand Children and Young Adults Book Award for YA fiction. She is also co-editor, with Witi Ihimaera, of an anthology of Māori myths, Pūrākau, published in 2019. Whiti teaches Writing for the Young at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University.