INFO
| Name | Isobar Precinct |
| Year | 2021 |
| Writer(s) | Angelique Kasmara |
| Publisher | The Cuba Press |
| Type of Text | Novel |
| Artform | Literature |
ABOUT
Set on Karangahape Road in Tāmaki Makaurau, Isobar Precinct opens in 2015 with a violent murder in Symonds St Cemetery, triggering a chain of events that throws tattoo artist Lestari into a string of mysteries involving a series of break-ins at her studio, a spate of illegal clinical drug trials in the 1980s and her missing father.
Blending crime, thriller and speculative fiction, Angelique Kasmara’s debut novel has been praised for its “controlled unpredictability” as well as its detailed observations, vivid characterisation, irreverent tone and tumbling pace. Reviewing the book for Kete, Ruth Spencer writes:
It’s at once world-building and vernacular: the language enhances the tension and urgency as the action unfolds and keeps the increasingly fantastical aspects grounded in the tangible familiar…While the speculative elements unfold with all their fascinating ramifications, they’re filtered through human experience, through desires, longings and utility, as all scientific breakthroughs inevitably are. Lestari is confronted with the tensions between help and harm, regret and hope, moments when life should have been different and what, if anything, she might do about it.
Written during her Master’s of Creative Writing — “my son was 3 years old so I became really adept at working on a paragraph at a time in between chores” — the first draft of the manuscript received the University of Auckland’s Wallace Foundation Prize in 2016.
LINKS
Key awards
2016 — University of Auckland’s Wallace Foundation Prize
