Shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2009
This will intrigue and fascinate you from the start. Set in a
futuristic utopian society Anax is taking an exam which will decide if
she can enter the elite ‘Academy’ and her subject is Adam Forde, her
long dead hero. Although set in a futuristic world, eternal
philosophical questions arise in the course of the exam making Anax
question herself and possibly all she has believed to be the truth
about her hero. This is a real page turner and if you don’t read it in
one sitting we would be very surprised!
A fourteen-year-old Anax thinks she knows her history. She'd better. She's sat facing three Examiners and her grueling five-hour examination has just begun. If she passes, she'll be admitted into The Academy - the elite institution that runs her utopian society.
Bernard Beckett has a degree in Economics, and has taught in the Wellington region for several years. He has published nine novels, and has won many awards for his fiction.
In 2006 Bernard was awarded 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.)
