Both Tina Makereti and Charlotte Randall have written intriguing novels that challenge the cliché of the South Pacific island as tropical paradise.

Makereti’s Where the Rekohu Bone Sings, with its themes of identity and race, partially takes place in the Marlborough Sounds and the Chatham Islands, while Randall’s The Bright Side of My Condition follows the fortunes of a group of shipwrecked convicts on the unforgivingly rugged Snares Islands. They talk character, setting and historical research with Morrin Rout.