Max

I want to let her know that choosing something is the entire problem. How do you choose something without feeling the undeniable loss of everything you rejected?

Max is about to finish high school. On the surface it appears he has everything, but underneath he is floundering. Grappling with questions about his birth parents and his sexuality, he feels that there is a seed of badness deep within him that will inevitably be exposed.

After an incident at the end-of-year party sets Max's world to crumbling, he must finally figure out who he is and where he came from - and who he is allowed to love.

Max is a vivid and insightful coming-of-age novel about the ways we weave the threads of our adolescent identities into a cohesive adult self.

About the Author

Avi Duckor-Jones trained as a lawyer before gaining his MA in creative writing from Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters in 2013. His travel writing has been published with BBC Travel, the New Zealand Listener and Lonely Planet, among others.

Avi has worked as a writing instructor and trip leader for National Geographic, directed a school in Ghana, and is the winner of the reality television competition Survivor New Zealand. His first book, Swim, won the 2018 Viva la Novella award. He currently lives on Waiheke Island with his wife and two children, where he enjoys open-water distance swimming and works as an English teacher at Waiheke High School.