South-West of Eden A Memoir, 1932–1956

'I said many times I would not write autobiography - partly because it might signal, either to my inner self, or to others, a "signing off" as a writer; and partly because I did not want to mark off areas that were fact in my life from those that might yet be invented. Fiction likes to move, disguised and without a passport, back and forth across that border, and prefers it should be unmarked and without check-points.' - C K Stead. Happily for the many readers of his novels, poems, criticism and essays, New Zealand's leading literary figure C K Stead has changed his mind. South-West of Eden is a volume of 'autobiopsy' from Stead's birth in 1932 up until 1956, the year he left New Zealand for the first time. From running wild as a boy in Cornwall Park to joining the Labour Party aged 7; from his love affair with Diane Henderson to the annus mirabilis he spent, newly married to Kay, at a flat on Takapuna Beach down the road from Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame, Stead casts a critical eye and a novelist's voice over his own life. An Aucklander to the core -'Most things of real significance in my life and the life of my family had happened somewhere in sight from the summit of Mt Eden'- Stead here turns his home town into a land of myth and symbol: 'Tamaki of many lovers, portage for ancient Maori waka, wasp-waist of the fish of Maui, site of a Pakeha-planned and never built coast-to-coast canal, and of a harbour-toharbour ghost-tram (52 seats and 7-standing-if-full-inside) no longer running except in the head of an elderly writer late in the night remembering at his laptop: these are no more than ways of describing, of laying claim to, and a hold on, his own whenua, his place and its history.' In a virtuoso performance, Stead wonderfully illuminates 23 years of his time and his place.

C. K. Stead is a towering figure in New Zealand literature, having gained international acclaim as a novelist, poet, critic, and essayist. He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Auckland, where he has taught for more than 20 years, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Winner of numerous awards and honors—such as the prestigious CNZ Michael King Fellowship in 2005—he is the author of many works, including Book Self, Collected Poems: 1951–2006, The New Poetic, and Smith's Dream.