Dan M. Davin

Janet Wilson

Ed. by Jennifer Lawn, Massey University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of York), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

Born 1 Sep 1913
Died 28 Sep 1990
Activity 1933-1990

Places

Born in New Zealand
Active in England; New Zealand

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Resources

Davin's Works

Save to Bookshelf

During his lifetime Dan Davin was celebrated as the foremost practitioner of the realism that dominated the New Zealand literary tradition from the 1930s to the 1960s. Yet as nearly all his fiction was written from abroad, he can also be read as a diasporic writer, concerned with contemporary themes of displacement: the meaning of home, origins and belonging in both civilian and military contexts. In short stories about an Irish-Catholic childhood he established himself as a regional writer, stamping Invercargill and Southland with his imprint as definitively as Ronald Hugh Morrieson stamped Hawera and Taranaki with his. The philosophical enquiry voiced by his protagonists into the nature of fate and of man’s dislocation – features of his own self imposed exile – makes him more a…

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2830 words

Citation: Wilson, Janet. "Dan M. Davin". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 March 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1157, accessed 21 November 2024.]