IN OCTOBER 2012 several dozen writers from New Zealand appeared at the Frankfurt Book Fair where New Zealand had been nominated as the ‘country of honour’. We had been gathered for a series of literary events, part of a full-throated piece of cultural diplomacy which would, it was argued, assist increased sales of New Zealand books and promote trade and tourism.

It was interesting being amongst it all – the cultural presentations, the operatic pavilion display, the anxious literary egos swelling and dying a dozen times a day – interesting and often unsettling. The gap between the writing act and the representation of one’s self and work at a festival is usually disorienting. But this was self plus work plus, somehow, the national literature at the biggest and most glamorous book sale in the world. The stakes felt both high and absurd.