‘The reviewer notes that Wells’s ‘skill allows him not just to compile a compelling narrative but to subtly pepper it with micro-essays on many themes that revolve around the enigmatic figure of Colenso.

North & South greeted The Hungry Heart with ‘Everyone’s favourite polymath is back’, calling it ‘a remarkable book about a versatile colonial figure’. ‘The conventional wisdom among biographers is that they ought to keep themselves out of the story and maintain a judicious distance from their subjects. Metro declared The Hungry Heart the best New Zealand biography of 2011, saying that it ‘ranks amongst the finest and most fascinating biographies ever produced in this country’. The New Zealand Herald called Iridescence ‘without question one of the most important New Zealand novels of the year’, noting that the ‘final pages have a tender grace to them, a respect for the redemptive possibilities of everyday life, which had me in tears.’ In 2011 Peter Wells was awarded the Michael King Fellowship. In 2009 Peter Wells won the Copyright Licensing Limited Award to write a book on William Colenso, The Hungry Heart: Journeys with William Colenso, published in 2011, which was shortlisted for the NZ Post Awards. His published novels include Boy Overboard, which was shortlisted for the 1998 Commonwealth Prize (Pacific–Asia Region), and Iridescence, which was runner-up for the Deutz Medal Winner for Fiction at the Montana Book of the Year Awards and a finalist in the Tasmania-Pacific Award. He has published another book of short fiction, The Duration of a Kiss (New York, Sydney and London), and a memoir Long Loop Home, which won the 2002 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Biography.

The book also won, among other awards, the PEN (NZ) Best First Book in Prose Award in 1992. Peter won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction for his first book of short stories, Dangerous Desires, which was published in New Zealand, New York and London. In 2006 was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature and film. He spearheaded the saving and restoration of the Civic Theatre in Auckland in the 1980s, and is co-founder of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. His short stories, novels, memoirs and biographies have won many awards and accolades.

He studied history at the University of Auckland and the University of Warwick, England.

Boy overboard by Peter Wells