Oracles and Miracles is Stevan Eldred-Grigg's best-selling debut novel about Ginnie and Fag, twin sisters growing up in poverty in Christchurch in the thirties and forties and living in a world of dreams. It's a city of 'peeling paint, flaking iron, cracked linoleum, dusty yards, lean-tos, and asphalts, dunnies and textile mills'. The novel is a heart-warming story of the girls' close relationship as they grow into women and attempt to escape their impoverished background.

Author Biography

Stevan Eldred-Grigg is a novelist, short-story writer, essayist and historian. His first book, A Southern Gentry, created considerable controversy for its portrayal of wealthy landowners in colonial New Zealand. Oracles and Miracles, his first novel, was published in 1987. He has written eight other novels. These include The Shining City and Mum, part of the Oracles and Miracles trilogy, Kaput!, and Shanghai Boy. His histories include A New History of Canterbury, Pleasures of the Flesh, Working People, and The Rich. His latest work of non-fiction, Diggers, Hatters and Whores, about the New Zealand goldrushes, was published at the end of 2008.