Pulmulla is worried her vision of the future will come true.

Biligiri just wants to get home. Besides, he's in love for the first time, and will be a father in 22 months.

Tant-Meisie is lonely and going around in circles. She meets famous and eccentric people though.

Hannibal Solo thought he was retired - until Carroll came along, and she's hard case.

On top of this, he has voices in his head.

"Absorbing and lyrical, and poignant in the elephants' message. Like Heathcote Williams' Sacred Elephant before it, Taken deserves a wide readership."

-Gareth Patterson, author of The Secret Elephants and Beyond the Secret Elephants.

"A writer of striking originality with qualities of daring and humour that are rare. Like Lloyd Jones, Alex has the ability to create a landscape so vivid the reader feels he is walking down a dusty road or in the hold of a ship."

-Elizabeth Smither, novelist and Poet Laureate of New Zealand

"There is energy and confidence on every page. The way you inhabit your lines is remarkable."

-Lloyd Jones author of Mr Pip and Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Award.

"I was greatly impressed by Taken - an accomplished and poignant story. Here was a writer of considerable potential should he decide to write longer fiction..."

• Tessa Duder CNZM OBE, author of the Alex quartet, winner of Storyline Margaret Mahy Medal.

"I've read and re-read your story, and I think this: It is intriguing, beautifully-crafted, moving and poetic... It brings the knowing eye of elephants to bear on the reader, creating the feeling of injustice I always have when I'm close to them. It's a parable of imperialism. For all these reasons and more, I loved it."

-Bruce Ansley, author of A long Slow Affair of the Heart, A Fabled Land, and Coast: A New Zealand Journey, winner Best Illustrated Non-fiction Book at the New Zealand Post Book Awards

"Beautiful, eye opening, exquisitely absorbing, gentle and powerful."

-Danielle Mathieson, New Zealand artist