Book Launch: Party Boy by Breton Dukes
Sunday, 15th February 2026 3:00 PM
Woof! bar, 368 Moray Place, Dunedin
Join the launch of Party Boy, the highly anticipated debut novel by Breton Dukes!
All welcome!
The book will be launched by Lawrence Patchett, with words from publisher Fergus Barrowman and a reading from Breton. The Broken Heartbreakers will perform two songs, including their new single 'Party Boy'. Books will be for sale with thanks to University Book Shop Otago.
Marco is stressed. On one hand, he's a cook in a progressive city bar, a married father of three, doing all he can to raise his boys right. On the other (slightly burnt) hand, his life is chaos. Every day seems full of cruel and unusual obstacles, from temperamental arancini to a car breakdown at the worst possible time. Painkillers and booze can only do so much to protect him from the fallout of his adolescence – the bullying, the fear, the things that were done to him and the things he did.
Now his fiftieth birthday is approaching, and all the ghosts of his life are invited to the party. It feels like his last chance, though he isn't sure for what.
'A novel I've been hoping for! Party Boy is a shock of a book about damaged males, about being a father, a husband, a son, an idiot, someone trying to make amends. Somehow it manages to be both pulse-rattling and poetic, and from its daring mix of comedy and terror, what arrives is finally a deeply affecting portrait of a man on the edge.' —Damien Wilkins, author of Delirious
Breton Dukes is the author of three acclaimed short story collections: What Sort of Man (2020), Empty Bones (2014) and Bird North (2011). He has worked in hospitals, language schools, gymnasiums, bars, kitchens, factories and government call centres, and has received the Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writer's Bursary. He lives with his wife and three children in Dunedin.
Cover: Dudley Benson