{"title":"Books by C. K. Stead","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781869409463","title":"What You Made of It","description":"\u003cp\u003eHaving left the university to write full-time at the end of volume two, Stead throws himself into his work. In novels like \u003cem\u003eSister Hollywood\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eMy Name Was Judas\u003c\/em\u003e, criticism in the \u003cem\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/em\u003e and the \u003cem\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/em\u003e, to 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 \u003cem\u003eThe Bone People\u003c\/em\u003e to the meaning of the Treaty to the controversy over a London writer’s flat.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhat was it like to be Allen Curnow’s designated ‘Critic across the Crescent’; or alternatively to be labelled ‘the Tonya Harding of NZ Lit’? How did poems emerge from time and place, sometimes as naturally as ‘leaves to a tree’, sometimes effortfully? And how did novels about individual men and women retell stories of war (World War II, Yugoslavia, Iraq) and peace?\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eCovering Stead’s travels from Los Angeles to Liguria, Croatia and Crete to Caracas and Colombia, as New Zealand poet laureate and Kohi swimmer, \u003cem\u003eWhat You Made of It \u003c\/em\u003etakes us deep inside the mind and experience of one of our major writers – and all in Stead’s famously lucid ‘story-telling’ prose.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308600013173,"sku":"9781869409463","price":39.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781869409463_ab6184fd-ea88-4ff1-a47b-ebe9a4e998cb.jpg?v=1786029409"},{"product_id":"south-west-of-eden","title":"South West of Eden","description":"\u003cp\u003e‘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\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHappily for the many readers of his novels, poems, criticism and essays, C. K. Stead has changed his mind. In \u003cem\u003eSouth-West of Eden\u003c\/em\u003e, a coming-of-age memoir by New Zealand’s leading poet, novelist and critic, Stead writes of a life ‘lived by history’ – running wild in Cornwall Park, joining the Labour Party aged seven, discovering poetry in a third-form English class and enjoying a newly married annus mirabilis in a flat on Takapuna Beach down the road from Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn 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 waka, wasp-waist of the fish of Maui, site of a Pākehā-planned and never built coast-to-coast canal and of the harbour-to-harbour ghost-tram, no longer running except in the head of an elderly writer, late in the night, remembering at his laptop.’\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a virtuoso performance, C. K. Stead wonderfully illuminates 23 years of his time and his place.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57490253382005,"sku":"9781869404543","price":35.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781869404543.jpg?v=1786442139"},{"product_id":"death-of-the-body","title":"Death Of The Body","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Will appeal to lovers of the wayward novel game as it is played by Lawrence Sterne or Italo Calvino\" - \u003ci\u003eJackie Wullschläger, Financial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eProfessor 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 kitchen so as to observe the movements of his neighbours and their visitors. Among these visitors, photographed by the drug squad, is one of his oldest friends. And living next door is a woman Harry may have had an encounter with in Singapore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe University is no escape from these complications on the domestic front: Harry's relationship with a student is causing concern among the Philosophy Department Women's Collective. Some of his colleagues also suspect him of going astray academically.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe story takes place in Auckland, New Zealand. But who is telling the story? Why is he in Europe? Why does he keep moving from one city to another, and why does he seem to require the presence of a certain Uta Haverstrom in order to write it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Death of the Body\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e is a delightful blend of wit, intelligence and excitement.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57490293457269,"sku":"9781846554711","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781846554711.jpg?v=1786442180"},{"product_id":"the-chancy-now","title":"The Chancy Now","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIn the 1970s a young professor, I rescued\u003cbr\u003efrom a puddle in Princes Street a Penguin\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eof Nietzsche’s \u003c\/em\u003eThus Spake Zarathustra\u003cem\u003e, dried it\u003cbr\u003eand read it, annotating as I went, underlining\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ehis thought that one must have chaos within\u003cbr\u003eif one is to give birth to a dancing star –\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt 93, his wife Kay and son Oliver recently dead, writing nothing, C. K. Stead thought there were no more books. Then, ‘alive on pills, \/ and the surgeon’s knife’, enduring grief and recovery, sonnets began to appear, three or four a week, the poems collected in this volume.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eChaos won’t teach a sonnet to limit its lines\u003cbr\u003ebut every sonnet should have its dancing star.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the ABs under the high ball to Braunias’s lamingtons, from Dionysus to Guide Rangi, from the Uber driver (‘He’s a Wittgenstein man so we get along perfectly \/ passing over in silence what can’t be discussed’) to the author (‘My Chookspeak’s better than my French because I learned it \/ in the right way, by ear, not off the page’), 120 sonnets reveal a poet battered, bruised and still in his prime.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAfter a sonnet tending to self-pity and crap\u003cbr\u003eI consign it to the bin and set off knowing\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003etoday’s wild northerly wind and rough seas\u003cbr\u003eat Kohi will knock me into shape.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57507602956661,"sku":"9781776712793","price":12.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781776712793.jpg?v=1788791960"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-c-k-stead.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}