 Shanghai Boy Random House, Auckland 2006 ISBN-13: 978-1-86941-793-2 ISBN-10: 1-86941-793-3 Shanghai Boy, his newest novel, is a provocative book about fathers and sons, passion and Shanghai. A leathery old father is slowly dying of cancer in New Zealand. His son, who has just hit fifty, falls fiercely in love with a young man, one of his students, at a university in China. The young man goes missing. The old man dies. Has there been a murder? Two murders? Shanghai increasingly takes centre stage: a pulsing city of crowded streets and clouding smog; motley smells and mindless noise; a complex and contradictory place that leaves the middle-aged son both horrified and aroused. Shanghai Boy, the first novel by any New Zealand writer to focus on the lives of ordinary people in contemporary China, has just been published by Random House under the Vintage imprint.
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 been adapted for stage and radio, playing on Radio New Zealand and independently adapted for broadcasting by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Lauris Edmond: 'I don't remember reading another novel that has given me such a strong sense that the significance of life has to be fought for through its everyday trivialities.' Michael King: 'its technique is innovative; it is understatedly dramatic, believable and moving. Andrew Mason: 'rich, warm and dark, complex, layered and subtle.’ Judith Brett: 'I find it hard to think of a contemporary Australian novel which treats the complex and contradictory relations between work, sexuality, family life and class in as sophisticated and unromantic a way.' Oracles and Miracles has been adapted for stage and radio by Radio New Zealand, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Central Broadcasting Company of Taiwan.
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 time.' Robert Dessaix: 'one of the most marvellous pieces of gay writing.
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 himself through his novels and histories as the province's most significant and gifted society portrait painter.’ Heather Murray: 'The marvels of Eldred-Grigg's third novel underline the wisdom of the earlier ones. ... Eldred-Grigg does not put a foot wrong.'
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 ... it cuts people off at the knees while ensuring we laughingly look on.' |
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 other work written by Stevan Eldred-Grigg. David Eggleton: 'The book chronicles the primal fear, the panic, the collective shock ... the sense of a minor apocalypse; the book becomes the obituary of an era.’ Jane Westaway: 'inflated and contrived ... unpleasantly sexual.’ Joanna Murray-Smith: 'an involving, sad story with a fine feel for a provincial city.’
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 our finest recorders of domestic landscapes ... always thoughtful, frequently vulnerable, constantly quotable.’' Gerry Webb: 'slackly written, repetitious, preposterous, vain, snobbish, self-consciously mannered, irritatingly evasive, world weary.’' Sebastian Brooke: 'Eldred-Grigg's prose style is very refined.’
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 Zealand. Claudia Marquis, journalist, Auckland: 'an enjoyable hour or two of bitchy pleasure.’ Kim Worthington, journalist, Wellington: 'this awful little novel.’ Robert Jones, editor, Harper Collins New York: 'Stevan Eldred-Grigg is a wonderful writer.'
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 great dying city of Berlin. Heather Murray: 'Frau Betty Mohr, mother of one young daughter and wife to a soldier at the front, is not only the archetype German hausfrau but one who opens her conversations with a heartfelt "Heil Hitler!" She scrubs, skimps, stands in queues for food, knits, re-knits, reshapes old clothing and goads her less committed neighbours into fresh efforts and sacrifices for the Leader.’ Sheila Alexander: 'There is an art to Eldred-Grigg's writing that is deeply emotional.’
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 beautiful simplicity. His narrative is down to earth, yet often funny and witty.' Wang Yumei, China Press and Publishing Journal, Beijing: 'Vivid, active, supple translation.'
Taiwanese edition of Oracles and Miracles, translated by Shih Li-an.
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