About this item
Playfully literate and strikingly original, an unforgettable debut novel about art, imitation, and obsession. Excitement is rare in the small town of Marumaru, New Zealand. So when a young Maori man arrives on the morning train one day in 1903 -- announcing the imminent visit of a famous strongman -- the entire town turns out to greet him, save one. Colton Kemp, a department store window-dresser, is at home, watching his beloved wife die in premature childbirth. Tormented by grief, he hatches a plan to make his name and thwart his rival, the silent and gifted Carpenter: over the next sixteen years he will raise his newborn twins in secrecy and isolation, to become human mannequins in the world's most lifelike window display. The Mannequin Makers is an adventure-filled and thoroughly delightful yarn, introducing one of international literature's most promising young talents to American audiences.
About the Author
Craig Cliff lives in Wellington, New Zealand, with his young family. He has published essays, reviews and poetry, and wrote a column for The Dominion Post for four years about his double life as an author and public servant. His short stories have been widely published and anthologised, including in ESSENTIAL NEW ZEALAND SHORT STORIES (2009) . His collection, A MAN MELTING, won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book.His first novel, THE MANNEQUIN MAKERS (2013) , has sold editions in Romania (2016) , the US (2017) , and the UK (2019) . The New York Times declared it, 'a book that makes grand promises and delivers'. Cliff participated in the University of Iowa's International Writers Program in 2013 - where he first became interested in Saint Joseph of Copertino - and was the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago in 2017. His novel, NAILING DOWN THE SAINT, is forthcoming in 2019.
