{"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 Pakeha-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","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/south-west-of-eden","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}