Sarah Lark's Landscape Novels and the 'New Zealand Exotic'

Abstract

[eng] This article focuses on Sarah Lark’s first New Zealand trilogy, historical romances set in New Zealand and marketed as “landscape novels”. After a brief analysis of the landscape boom, it focuses on the novels’ construction of the “New Zealand exotic”, landscaped version of New Zealand history and culture designed for the global literary marketplace which proves the enduring power of exoticising discourses. The article argues that the novels create both tourist and settler landscapes: the former are reminiscent of contemporary articulations of Aotearoa New Zealand as an ideal tourist destination, which in turn go back to colonial renderings of Māoriland; the latter reshape historical material to prioritize stories of female development and settler triumph, minimizing discussions of interracial conflict and land dispossession.