What really happened to a soldier in the infamous Maori battalion, killed in the battle for Crete during the Second World War? And why did the soldier's family place a curse on O'Dwyer, the officer in command when he died? Half a century later, two Oxford dons, Mike Newall and Bertie Winterstoke, attend the funeral of Donovan O'Dwyer, an expatriate New Zealander. After the ceremony, Newall reveals to Winterstoke that O'Dwyer spent his life haunted by a secret Maori curse, the "makutu", allegedly brought down upon him because he killed one of his own men.
In the days that follow, Newall continues the story of O'Dwyer's "cursed" life. In talking about O'Dwyer, Newall, also a New Zealander in self-enforced exile, slowly begins to unveil the story of his own life to his willing audience, in a narrative that shifts from New Zealand to Oxford to Croatia to the crushing Allied defeat in Crete.
'Talking about O'Dwyer' is an elegantly-crafted, poised novel about war and peace, about the points of conflict and enrichment where different cultures and traditions intersect and overlap.
