'It was a joy': Anthony Byrt on writing fiction

Anthony Byrt is a writer, art critic and the author of two books of non-fiction, The Mirror Steamed Over and This Model World, with another coming in 2026. As Kaipukahu Writer-in-Residence at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, he wrote his first novel, the newly-published Dying Days. The book centres around the final days of the Second World War in the Italian city Trieste, and the standoff between Allied forces and Tito's Yugoslav Army.

He calls writing fiction 'a joy'. Kete caught up with Anthony to find out more about Dying Days.

Kia ora Anthony! Dying Days has been in your mind for quite some time, would that be fair to say?

The real events that serve as the backdrop to Dying Days have been with me for years. I became interested in the Trieste standoff between the New Zealand Army and Tito’s Yugoslavs while I was living in London. That was sixteen or seventeen years ago. I’d experimented with some novel ideas at the time, but nothing really stuck. Then I came back to New Zealand, and art writing kind of took over. I returned to the Trieste story when I got a writing residency at Waikato University in 2023, and it dawned on me that it would be a great setting for a thriller. Once I made that breakthrough, the writing happened very quickly.

Do you have a personal link to this time and place in history?

Yes, in a tangential way. I descend from the ‘Dally’ gumdiggers who settled in Northland. Trieste is north of Dalmatia but it’s still a very important Adriatic port, much like Split or Dubrovnik, both of which I have strong connections to. My great- uncle served with the New Zealanders in Italy. I was very intrigued by the idea that men who would have been cousins – and my relatives – were on either side of the Trieste standoff: Dalmatians in Tito’s forces, and Dallies from Northland, serving with the Kiwis.

What was the most fascinating fact you found in the research for Dying Days?

There were so many, but the biggest breakthrough was discovering that there’d been a rumour of Kiwi soldiers going missing at the hands of the Yugoslavs. There’s no evidence this happened, but it was nonetheless a real rumour circulating in the city. I was able to talk with a fantastic historian, René Moehrle, who told me that during the German occupation of Trieste, the Nazis had a specialist propaganda unit. They essentially operated as professional rumour spreaders. That changed everything for me, and gave Dying Days the jet fuel it needed.

How did you find writing fiction after your successful non-fiction books?

It was a joy. I’m not saying it’s easier, but it was certainly more pleasurable. My non-fiction has always leaned heavily on fiction techniques, but this time I was able to dream even further into the gaps that the real events opened up, which gave me the opportunity to go to some pretty weird places. Fiction has always been my first love, both as a reader and a writer, so it’s great to finally get a novel into the world.

What Aotearoa New Zealand book do you wish you’d written?

I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about a book like that – I find it hard enough to write my own. But Dying Days wouldn’t exist without the books of Geoffrey Cox. He was Freyberg’s Head of Intelligence on the final push to Trieste. The Race for Trieste is his account of those events. He’d also been a journalist during the Spanish Civil War, and his book Defence of Madrid is phenomenal. I’m less envious of the books themselves than I am of the life Cox lived as a young man – Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, then a foreign correspondent in Spain, then the sharp end of World War II. I owe him an enormous debt, and he’s one of the only real people to appear in Dying Days – my tribute to him.

What’s been your best read this year so far?

I always struggle to read just after I’ve finished a book. I’ve mainly been distracting myself with guitars, cricket and horror films. But I have just read Never Understood, by William and Jim Reid – otherwise known as The Jesus and Mary Chain. Most of their best music in the eighties was before my time, but they were a huge influence on the bands that shaped my teenage years, and they made some great albums in the nineties too. It’s a brilliant look at how they fought against the explosion of crap pop music by building massive walls of noise, to the point of their own near-oblivion.

Last, but definitely not least, what are you writing next?

It’s been a pretty intense year, because I also have a book about Shane Cotton coming out with Auckland University Press in October. I was finishing both books at the same time, which felt a bit crazy at times – but somehow working on two things concurrently suited me. So I’ve now got a couple of thrillers on the boil. The more I’ve reflected on Dying Days, the more I’ve realised it came out of a very particular process. I’m doing my best to set that process up again, so I can discover these new stories the same way I found the plot of Dying Days.

Dying Days by Anthony Byrt (Affirm Press) is in bookstores now.