TRAITOR

What can our enemy teach us about love? How does passion flow from grief? Who can know the contours of a life?

David Monroe is a young New Zealander who is transplanted from the pasture lands of New Zealand to the artillery-stripped hills of Gallipoli at the beginning of the first World War. In the heat and confusion of battle he finds himself standing beside a man wearing a red crescent who directs David's efforts to save a wounded soldier. The next instant a shell bursts over them.

The man is Turkish, a doctor named Mahmoud. He and David, both wounded, are moved to an army hospital on Lemnos. As their wounds heal, a deep and enduring bond grows between them. That bond is strong enough for David to want to betray his country for his friend. His plan fails and David will never see Mahmoud again. Reprieved from execution, David is sent to the Western Front. In France, amid the horrors of the war, he sees a young New Zealand boy named Jamie Mitchell killed before his eyes. The only solace David can draw is from his memory of Mahmoud and his teaching of the truths of Sufi mysticism.

Returning to New Zealand, David is shunned as a traitor until, in 1923, he meets Sarah Mitchell, Jamie's mother, who changes his life forever.

TRAITOR is a formidable and mesmerising debut, a story of passion, failure, memory, wisdom and love.

Stephen Daisley was born in 1955 and raised in remote parts of New Zealand. He served in the New Zealand army for five years, and then worked at a range of jobs, on sheep and cattle stations, on mining rigs, in factories and as a seller of newspapers.

Winner of the 2011 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction.