Book description
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 Yeats and the Indian mind. The enigmatic Margot,
whose bond with her athletic brother Mark troubled Laszlo in ways he
didn't quite understand. Heather, the call girl with whom Laszlo
exchanged lessons on Shakespeare for lessons in love.
The great writers of the time, and the details of their lives are
recorded by Samantha in her idiosyncratic research project that she
named her Secret History of Modernism. There was all of that and more,
and then there was Laszlo, knocking blindly about among them,
despairing at his academic prospects, and gradually realising that he
was, would only ever be, a storyteller. Now, years later, from the
other side of the world, the people seem to spring to life again, in
this beguiling work by one of New Zealand's foremost writers.
C. K. Stead was Professor of English at the University of Aukland
until 1986. In 1984 he was awarded the CBE for services to New Zealand
literature. He has published eleven volumes of poetry, two volumes of
stories, several works of criticism, a memoir and twelve novels
including, most recently,
Risk.
