Mister Pip

Author(s): Lloyd Jones

NZ Non Fiction

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2007! Winner of Montana Deutz Medal for Fiction 2007. An inventive and original novel from this multi-award-winning author. Lloyd Jones' new novel is set mainly in a small village on Bougainville, a country torn apart by civil war. Mathilda attends the school set up by Mr Watts, the only white man on the island. By his own admission he's not much of a teacher and proceeds to educate the children by reading them Great Expectations. Mathilda falls in love with the novel, strongly identifying with Pip. The promise of the next chapter is what keeps her going; Pip's story protects her from the horror of what is happening around her - helicopters menacing the skies above the village and rebel raids on the ground. When the rebels visit the village searching for any remaining men to join their cause, they discover the name Pip written in the sand and instigate a search for him. When Pip can't be found the soldiers destroy the book. Mr Watts then encourages the children to retell the story from their memories. Then when the rebels invade the village, the teacher tells them a story which lasts seven nights, about a boy named Pip, and a convict...Years later, when she has fled the island for Australia, Matilda reaches for a copy of Great Expectations. First published October 2006.


Product Information

Lloyd Jones is an award-winning and critically-acclaimed author. Mr Pip has received universal critical acclaim and is being published world-wide. His novel The Book of Fame (2000) won the Deutz Medal for Fiction at the 2001 Montana Book Awards and the Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize in 2003, and was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003. His novel, Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance, was joint runner-up of the Deutz Medal for Fiction at the 2002 Montana Book Awards. It was co-published in Australia by Penguin Books. Lloyd Jones's other books include the controversial Biografi (1993), a travel book set in Albania in the aftermath of Communism. Biografi was judged one of the best books of the year in 1993 by the New York Times. His collection of short stories, Swimming to Australia (1991), was shortlisted for the New Zealand Book Awards. Choo Woo (1998), a dark and disturbing novel on the subject of child abuse, was published in New Zealand and Australia. Lloyd Jones lives in Wellington and publishes essays by New Zealand writers under his imprint the Four Winds Press.

General Fields

  • : 9780143020899
  • : Penguin Books
  • : Penguin Books
  • : September 2006
  • : 230x150mm
  • : New Zealand
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Lloyd Jones
  • : Paperback
  • : Reprint
  • : 823.914
  • : very good
  • : 240
  • : Modern fiction