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The Water Thieves ISBN: 9781877361517 Release: 10-2006 Subject: NZ literary non-fiction Format: Paperback RRP: NZ$34.99 |
"The Waitohi is our nearest river. It’s where we’d go on summer days too hot for work...We basked in cool water, grinning at each other as it slipped around our chins...This was a no-man’s paradise until...until the pumps went down and trenches opened up the earth...to mine the river when, indignant, she slipped at last beneath the stones to hide."
The Water Thieves is a marvellous and engaging account concerning our most valuable natural resource. Sam Mahon, galvanized into action by rumours that the Hurunui River is under threat, agrees against his better instincts, to become involved in local politics.
Mahon embarks on a crusade that rivals the best of Shakespearean comedy: he’s comically disarming yet often a blistering social satirist. His energy for sustaining the good fight is prodigious, his techniques for gaining media and political attention are hilarious, bloody-minded and bold. From pyrotechnics to mock funerals, from stabbingly witty speeches to asking men in power to drink polluted river water, Mahon demonstrates all the qualities of a firebrand.
Poetic, passionate, provocative: Sam Mahon weaves the world of the artist and the activist with skill and immediacy. A protest song for our time.
