'That's Auckland, mate - the Queen of the North.' 'The what?' 'The Queen of the North. That's what they call it - in Auckland. This is God's own, this country.' Man Alone is a literary landmark that has haunted our writing for decades. John Mulgan's vision of New Zealand society as detached and unsentimental, with the power to reject and alienate, enriches our understanding of who, and what, we are.
Author Biography
John Mulgan was born in Christchurch and educated at Auckland and Oxford universities, working as a journalist in Britain during the mid-to-late 1930s. Man Alone (1939) is his sole work of fiction. The posthumous Report on Experience (1947) drew profoundly upon his wartime experiences in Egypt and Greece, commenting on New Zealand and English society and politics during the 1930s. Mulgan took his own life in Egypt in 1945.
