Abstract
This interview explores the New Zealand writer Patricia Grace’s fiction from the 1970s to the present and her treatment of Maori culture, life and history. The approach aims to highlight central thematic concerns which recur in her works and seem crucial to the definition of Maori identity and literature. Grace discusses the impact of Western models on Native notions of family, education, imagination and spirituality, with particular reference to Potiki and Baby No-Eyes. She provides an insight into the Maori syncretistic response to Christianity. In the final part, she focuses on her latest novel Tu, dealing with the condition of apartheid experienced by the Maori in the 1940s, the participation of the Maori Battalion in World War II and their experience of a new country (Italy), reconstructed by the writer from documentary research and the account of her father who fought there.