Shanghai Boy
‘Age, no problem! Gender, no problem. Constellation, no problem. Body, sex, race, all no fucking problem. Feeling, you know! Feeling! That is everything.’ Shanghai Boy explores fathers and sons, passion and Shanghai. A leathery old dad is slowly dying of cancer in New Zealand. His son, who has...
Oracles and Miracles
Oracles and Miracles, a story about two girls living in a world of dreams while growing up in poverty, has sold more copies than almost any other work of fiction published in New Zealand and has been incorporated into the syllabus for secondary schools and university. Oracles and Miracles has...
The Shining City
A sequel to Oracles and Miracles, this book tells the story of two boys growing up in postwar affluence in the suburbs. Lauded by some critics, by others it has been trashed fiercely. W J McEldowney: 'Inverting life in the sordid city ... the most unpleasant book that I have read for a very long...
Mum
A story about a girl and a boy growing up in poverty in the postwar suburbs, this book completes the trilogy begun with Oracles and Miracles – a trilogy portraying five generations of a family and the story of an entire provincial society. David Eggleton: 'Stevan Eldred-Grigg has established...
People, People, People. A Brief History of New Zealand
‘New Zealand in the year 1200 was a land of trees and birds – and no people. The two main islands were covered nearly entirely in deep, dark, cool forest. New Zealand was entirely unknown to any people anywhere in the world.’ A very short history of New Zealand, this book covers many themes and...
The Siren Celia
A satirical comedy about colonial Canterbury. A novel of manners, it has been received with the same wide range of affection and rage provoked among readers by almost all the works of Stevan Eldred-Grigg. Jane Stafford: 'Victorian pastiche comes unstuck.' Andrew Peek: 'savagely readable ......
The Great Wrong War. New Zealand Society in WWI
The First World War was by far the worst catastrophe in the history of twentieth-century New Zealand. The Great Wrong War asks why the country went to war, whether it could or should have pulled out after the first slaughter, and what may have been the true costs. Quick, vivid, democratic and...
Gardens of Fire
A novel about a murderous fire in a department store. The book is closely based on historical research and looks at the very ordinary lives of very conventional shop workers and customers, yet lifts those lives into tragedy and mystery. Gardens of Fire has aroused more controversy than almost any...
Diggers, Hatters and Whores. The Story of the New Zealand Gold Rushes
The gold rushes from the 1850s to the 1870s were the biggest single event in the history of colonial New Zealand. Diggers, Hatters and Whores aims to bring to life, through fresh accessible writing and beautiful images, the thrilling and often desperate quest for the ‘royal metal.’ The book opens...
My History, I Think
Postmodern - or premodern? - autobiography. A book puzzling many reviewers. A work skipping backwards and forwards between fiction and non-fiction, between secrecy and betrayal. Critical comments have varied as always from scathing to acclamatory. David Hill: 'He proves again that he's one of...
Niu Xilan de Wenxue Lucheng
The history of New Zealand and its writers from the beginnings of the written word up to the present day. A book aimed at the Chinese reader, it takes the form of a series of essays drawing on the words of poets, short story writers, novelists and other essayists who have observed, thought, felt...
Blue Blood
A parody, and a darkly comic deconstruction, of the classic interwar crime novel. Ngaio Marsh stars as the smart, tormented heroine of the story. Nationwide television news coverage of Blue Blood after its publication dwelt on whether or not the novel cruelly defames of a cultural icon of New...
The Rich. A New Zealand History
A sequel to the author’s earlier work on the colonial gentry, this book widens the scope still further to become the first full portrait of all the wealthy throughout the whole history of New Zealand from the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth century. Wool lords, brewers, bankers,...
Kaput!
Nazism – the nightmare of the western imagination, the black hole at the heart of the twentieth century. Women – the warm heart of human life. What was life like for ordinary motherly women who supported Nazism? Kaput! chronicles the private lives of women in the capital of the Third Reich, the...
New Zealand Working People 1890-1990
‘Do working people have a history? Do they have a culture of their own? Or are they just a “bastard” class?’ These are some of the questions asked by this book, which is the most wide ranging history ever written about the working class of New Zealand. ‘Working people inherit a strong and...
Sheng Xian Qi Ji
Chinese edition of Oracles and Miracles, translated by Shih Li-an. Chen Yongxiang, Beijing University of Education: 'His fine, subtle study of girls and women in the novel makes them not only come to life but walk off the page.' Xiang Wei, Xinmin Evening News, Shanghai: 'Stevan writes with...
Pleasures of the Flesh. Sex and Drugs in Colonial New Zealand 1840-1915
Colonial society was easygoing, fond of sex and drugs, according to many travellers and other observers of nineteenth century New Zealand. Yet later generations have looked back at their forebears as dour folk who denied their bodies and crippled their souls with a stern puritanism. What were the...
Sheng Xian Qi Ji
Taiwanese edition of Oracles and Miracles, translated by Shih Li-an. Adapted for radio and broadcast by the Central Broadcasting Company, Taiwan 2007. Unitas, Taipei 2006 ISBN 957 522 606 2
A New History of Canterbury
The social history of a New Zealand province from its colonial beginnings to the late twentieth century. Canterbury has been a lively and changeable society. At first defined by many as ‘a very aristocratic province,’ it evolved into a focus for radicalism, socialism and religious millenarianism...
A Southern Gentry. New Zealanders Who Inherited the Earth
Nineteenth century society in the South Island – land of opportunity, or province of a rich and powerful elite coining money from a system of startling social inequality? A colourful, often satirical, portrait of the way the fabulous profits from huge flocks of sheep were used to found dynasties...
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Shanghai Boy
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Oracles and Miracles
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The Shining City
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Mum
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People, People, People. A Brief History of New Zealand
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The Siren Celia
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The Great Wrong War. New Zealand Society in WWI
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Gardens of Fire
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Diggers, Hatters and Whores. The Story of the New Zealand Gold Rushes
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My History, I Think
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Niu Xilan de Wenxue Lucheng
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Blue Blood
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The Rich. A New Zealand History
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Kaput!
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New Zealand Working People 1890-1990
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Sheng Xian Qi Ji
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Pleasures of the Flesh. Sex and Drugs in Colonial New Zealand 1840-1915
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Sheng Xian Qi Ji
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A New History of Canterbury
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A Southern Gentry. New Zealanders Who Inherited the Earth
Comments from the critics
David Hill, novelist, New Zealand: ‘Stevan Eldred-Grigg defies classification. He can swoop from the historical to the contemporary, from lyric to polemic, from fiction to faction. He’s unsettling as well as absorbing’.
Xiang Wei, literary critic, Shanghai: ‘Stevan writes with beautiful simplicity. His narrative is down to earth, yet often funny and witty.’
Robert Jones, editor, New York: ‘Stevan Eldred-Grigg is a wonderful writer.’