Although he is best known for his first novel,
Once Were Warriors, and the films and sequels it inspired, Alan Duff has published four other novels that demonstrate his ambition to go beyond the fictional world of the Heke family and claim a broader literary reputation. Of these four novels,
Both Sides of the Moonis by far the most interesting and challenging. Announced as his third novel as early as 1992, the book was eventually published as Duff's fifth novel in 1998, two years after the first sequel to
Once Were Warriors,
What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?. The intervening years had seen a hardening of Duff's stance on problems facing Maori in the 1990s and while his popularity was undiminished, critical interest in his writing had begun to wane after the publication of his polemical…
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Citation: Heim, Otto. "Both Sides of the Moon". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 March 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23262, accessed 21 November 2024.]