studies the relationship between a subgenre of contemporary romance set in New Zealand and official tourist promotion campaigns that largely rely on stereotypical cultural elements such as Māori All Black players, eroticized as romance heroes, and present the country as a paragon of interracial harmony, as evident in the successful relationships portrayed in the novels. As the author argues, “rugby romances set in New Zealand and produced by local authors (and ironically also by foreign ones) have benefitted from the comprehensive process of national branding to create and sell their works, while they in turn collaborate in the reinforcement and circulation of official narratives of New Zealand as ‘100 % Pure.’” (21)
The introduction to the volume says this chapter