Acid Song
FICTION RUNNER-UP 2009
Acid Song - Bernard Beckett
Longacre Press, ISBN 978-1-87746-011-1, $29.99 pbk
It’s election day in contemporary New Zealand. A psychologist’s political stand threatens to see him driven from the university community; a young father confronts a teenage burglar; a staffroom argument flares up; a young girl sets about mending her broken heart, and Richard, a biology lecturer, must deal with the secret that compels them all.
With powerful intensity Beckett composes a corrosive song of our times.
Bernard Beckett has a degree in Economics, and has taught in the Wellington region for several years. He has published eight novels, and has won many awards for his fiction.
In 2006 Bernard was warded a New Zealand Science, Mathematics and Technology Teacher Fellowship where he worked on a project examining DNA mutations. This new direction led to the publication of Genesis in 2006, which won the Young Adult Category in the 2007 NZ Post Book Awards. In 2008 the book made publishing history when UK publisher Quercus Books offered the largest advance ever put forward for a young adult novel in New Zealand. The novel, also published in Australia, is to be released in the UK as two separate editions: adult and young adult, and is to be published – at this date – in over 20 countries.
Bernard’s fascination for science also led to Falling for Science: Asking the Big Questions (2007), his non-fiction exploration of the relationship between story-telling and science. Bernard currently lives in Wellington with his wife, Clare Knighton (and co-author of Deep Fried.)
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