The Copper Garden: New Zealand Novels is a book of literary criticism and review about Aotearoa New Zealand fiction over the past one hundred fifty years. It focuses on those novels that have received attention - either with awards, prizes, or critique - and have been read to signify or perhaps even "embody" certain aspects of New Zealand character; these aspects include place, circumstance, manner, atmosphere, style, or literary historical relevance. The Copper Garden: New Zealand Novels presents sixty-five vignettes of renowned or critically relevant novels, with the intention of introducing to the reader some of the thematical complexities and undercurrents of the authors' works. The approach to the New Zealand novels is chronological, spanning the period of the late nineteenth to the early the twenty-first century. Through his analysis, Luke Strongman hopes to further the critical understanding and development of the Aotearoa New Zealand novel as an art form-- back cover.