"Will appeal to lovers of the wayward novel game as it is played by Lawrence Sterne or Italo Calvino" - Jackie Wullschläger, Financial TimesProfessor Harry Butler is obsessed with the Mind/Body problem. Unfortunately, this is not the least of his problems. Harry's wife has turned his study into a sufi shrine where she sits cross-legged and chants for hours on end: "I am not this body..." And Harry doesn't know it yet but the Drug Squad have taken up residence in his kitche...

We all know the story of Jesus told by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but what about the version according to Judas?In this witty, original and teasingly controversial account, some forty years after the death of Jesus, Judas finally tells the story as he remembers it. Looking back on his childhood and youth from an old age the gospel writers denied him, Judas recalls his friendship with Jesus; their schooling together; their families; the people who would go on to be disciples and ...

Award-winning author C.K. Stead takes us to the heart of contemporary Paris and into a world of books and witty conversation. The Necessary Angel is a story of people grappling with love and fidelity; a story about the importance of books; a commentary on living in complex modern-day Europe; and a page-turning mystery. With a surprising twist at the end, this is a sophisticated novel that shows Stead writing at the height of his powers.'Stead is a fine writer, intelligent ...

In this poignant new poetry collection, one of this country's most significant voices reflects on home, on away, and on friends living and dead. 'I lead a life of quiet medication', the poet claims, 'longing for foreign shores, adventure and death.' But whether swimming to the yellow buoy or remembering an encounter in Belsize Park, in the thick of it or asking, 'what next?', Stead's voice is intimate, amusing and always compelling. Swimming in the dark I call on memory – Rangitoto ahead, ...

As their freinds leave for Europe and the government gets tough with the unions, a bohemian community is enjoying the euphoria of youth.It was their dreamtime. The wider world beckoned from the white ships sailing past Rangitoto Island, but the dream was also here on the Takapuna shoreline of Auckland, where the artist Melior Farbro grew his vegetables and let Cecilia Skyways follow her own form of Zen Buddhism in his garden hut. Where Curl Skidmore, his brilliant young head full o...

'A vivid and engrossing historical novel' Daily TelegraphSpanning three years in the life of the writer Katherine Mansfield during the First World War, Mansfield follows the ups and downs of her relationship with Jack Middleton Murry and her struggle to write the 'new kind of fiction' which she felt the times demanded. She is restless, constantly on the move, in and out of London, to and from France, even into the war zone, to be with her French lover, novelist Fr...

Recently divorced New Zealander Sam Nola returns to London, where he spent two years in his early twenties. It is early 2003, and on both sides of Atlantic the case for military intervention in Iraq is being made - or fabricated.But life for Sam has never been better: a grown-up, half-French daughter from a long ago affair has recently got in touch, and he has walked into a lucrative role in the booming banking sector.It is only when he learns of the deaths of two friends w...

This collection of poetry culls Karl Stead's most lasting and memorable works into a single volume. Drawn from previously published works though his distinguished career, from his debut collection Whether the Will is Free to his recent publication The Black River, this resource also contains 22 previously unpublished poems from his early days.

A chance meeting has New Zealand writer Laszlo Winter thinking back to his time in London in the late 1950s. The Empire might be in a state of collapse, but for young 'colonials', England remains a mythical place that draws them from the farthest corners of the globe.There was Australian Samantha Conlan, clever, desirable, hopelessly in love with married Jewish New Zealander Freddy Goldstein, who carried with him a dark history. Rajiv, an earnest young Indian at work on a study of ...

Over a quarter of a century, C. K. Stead has built up a widely accessible collection of reviews and critical essays on New Zealand literature. In the Glass Case covers a wide spectrum of New Zealand writers, who are examined from a remarkably consistent viewpoint. The title is symbolic: New Zealand books were once held in a glass-fronted bookcase at the University of Auckland library. These were considered rare, although they are now out on the open shelves. Stead's views are often controv...

In his 85th year, C. K. Stead's new collection leads us deep inside the life of the poet. He looks back at his younger self, remembering old loves and cringing at his 'sonnets' lugubrious rhyming'. He tells us of those who have gone – Derrida ('that Derrida whom I derided died') and Curnow ('Allen's as dead now / as an old friend can be which is / hardly at all), Peter Porter and Lucien Freud. And he takes us along with him on the poetical life: from Dogshit Park in Budapest to a Zagreb bo...

Having left the university to write full-time at the end of volume two, Stead throws himself into his work. In novels like Sister Hollywood and My Name Was Judas, criticism in the London Review of Books and the Financial Times, poetry and memoir, Stead establishes his international reputation as novelist, poet, and critic. It is also a period when Stead's fearless lucidity on matters literary and political embroil him in argument—from The Bone Peopl...