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The Expatriates
The connection between a colony and its founder, centre and margin, is always paradoxical. Where once Britain sent colonists out into the world, now the descendents of those colonists return to interrogate the centre. This is a book about four of these returners: Harold Williams, journalist, linguist, Foreign Editor of The Times; Ronald Syme, spy, libertarian, historian of ancient Rome; John Platts-Mills, radical lawyer and political activist; and Joseph Burney Trapp, librarian, scholar and protector of culture. These were men, born in remote New Zealand, who achieved fame in Europe—even as they were lost sight of at home. Men who became, from the point of view of their country of origin, expatriates. A writer of penetrating insight, Martin Edmond explores the intersections of past and present in the lives of these four extraordinary individuals. Their stories combine, in the hands of this award-winning writer, to a moving reflection upon New Zealand’s place in the world, then and now.
The Dreaming Land
So here I am walking again an old path made new by the very fact that I am upon it once more, accompanied by familiar hordes: the fecund majority of the dead, the myriad of the living in all of their many forms, defunct, mutant, revenant or otherwise, traversing memory’s infinite field. In the evocative prose that makes him one of our finest writers, Martin Edmond recalls his experiences of growing up in rural New Zealand in the 1950s and 60s. The son of schoolteachers, Edmond’s early life was shaped by his father’s developing career and the moves it dictated: from Ohakune, to Greytown, to Huntly, to Heretaunga. The Dreaming Land shows us the making of a thinker and a writer. Edmond documents the people, locations, and events that made a lasting impression on him, and maps the development of his mental landscape – a landscape marked by curiosity, empathy and the capacity for acute observation. It is a book that is at once personal and universal, charting formative moments yet filled with details that resonate more broadly. The Dreaming Land pushes at the boundaries of what can be remembered to create a narrative which absorbs, illuminates and enchants.
Edmond Malone, Shakespearean Scholar
First modern full-length biography of scholar and member of late eighteenth-century intellectual elite.
Chronicle of the Unsung
Chronicle of the Unsung mingles biography and autobiography and is an unusual work, beautifully written and often powerful and moving, which fits no categories. Four quite separate periods or episodes in Edmond's life are linked by a number of themes and are often the excuse for discussions of historical figures, typically on society's margins, or reflections on the nature of art and its relation to personal life. The sections are set in Europe, Australia, Fiji and New Zealand and one of the fascinations of the work is the skilful way in which Edmond conveys the power, often sinister and disturbing, of the places in which he has lived and the impact the locations seem to have on his own personal life. Chronicle of the Unsung thus becomes at one level an account of Edmond's own development, of his process of self-discovery, and is another variant on the theme that has always interested him, the nature of the creative personality. The last section concerns a trip to a school reunion at Ohakune and deals with the author's relations with his well-known family and especially his mother.
Touchstones
A memoir that is at once a self-portrait, a hymn to a vanishing New Zealand, and a record of a varied cast of influential people. A young man leaves home a deckhand on a Norwegian freighter, to travel the world. He returns to New Zealand changed almost beyond recognition. Along the way he meets nine people who influence his life and help make him the writer he becomes. James McNeish's Touchstones has a cast of characters who include 'the Mother Courage of the English theatre', an anti-Mafia reformer in Sicily, a Kanak revolutionary who is assassinated, a rejected cousin and 'Mr Punch in naval uniform', the New Zealand poet Denis Glover. All are larger than life. Some of them, like the author's mysterious Maori aunt, are good enough to bottle. The book is witty, poignant and in the words of its editor, Emma Neale, 'rich in astonishing anecdote'.
The Resurrection of Philip Clairmont
This mingling of biography, autobiography and art history has at its centre the life and art of the painter Philip Clairmont, a tortured figure who died by his own hand in 1984. Meeting those who were close to Clairmont and observing where he lived and what he left behind, Martin Edmond makes his own journey. But he also brings to light facts not previously known or understood about Clairmont's childhood and family, his education and growth as an artist, his ideas about art and the artistic vocation. He explores his relationships with fellow artists and with mentors as well as his more personal roles as son, husband and father. Edmond is unswerving in his respect for the great Clairmont paintings and in his compassionate identification with the totality of his artistic commitment.
ISINGLASS.
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BWB Texts: Writers' Lives
Award-winning New Zealand writers Martin Edmond, Maurice Gee, Kirsty Gunn and Owen Marshall explore life and memory in this bundle of BWB Texts. These four works are combined into one easy-to-read e-book, available direct and DRM-free from our website or from international e-book retailers. Martin Edmond’s Barefoot Years is a memoir in which the author attempts to re-inhabit the lost domain of childhood. Widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s greatest fiction writers, Maurice Gee has written virtually no non-fiction. The exceptions are the two exquisite childhood reminiscences combined in a mini-memoir, Creeks and Kitchens. In this exquisitely written ‘notebook’ – ‘My Katherine Mansfield Project’ – Kirsty Gunn explores the meaning of ‘home’ in Thorndon. Owen Marshall reflects at length on his writing career and the forces that have shaped him as a writer, in Tunes for Bears to Dance To. BWB Texts are short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. Commissioned as short digital-first works, BWB Texts unlock diverse stories, insights and analysis from the best of our past, present and future New Zealand writing.
Histories of the Future
Essay collection by Martin Edmond, images by Maggie Hall.
The Autobiography of My Father
Awarded third place in the 1993 Wattie Book Award, Martin Edmond's The Autobiography of My Father is a pioneering work of creative non-fiction in which Edmond transforms his grief at the death of his father, Trevor Edmond, into a fascinating memoir and love letter. Two major sections of The Autobiography of My Father allow us to meet Trevor Edmond in his own words through taped interviews and confessional notes that he wrote for his psychiatrists. The book also presents a counterview to the opinions expressed in the celebrated autobiography of Lauris Edmond (Martin's mother), a leading poet and public figure. This is a deeply moving evocation by a gifted writer.
