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Stevan Eldred-Grigg
Stevan Eldred-Grigg is an award-winning novelist and historian. He grew up in a big tumultuous household on the West Coast and in Canterbury before graduating with a doctorate in h...view moreStevan Eldred-Grigg is an award-winning novelist and historian. He grew up in a big tumultuous household on the West Coast and in Canterbury before graduating with a doctorate in history from the Australian National University. He has lived in Blackball, Christchurch, Canberra, Whangarei, Wellington, Hamilton, Iowa City, Berlin, Mexico City, Shanghai, Singapore, Waiuku and Beijing. He now lives once more in Canterbury.Oracles and Miracles, a runaway bestseller, became the first major novel by a living New Zealand writer to be published in China. Shanghai Boy, published in 2006, explores a tortuous love affair between a New Zealander and a Chinese young man in the immense city of Shanghai. ‘Age, no problem! Gender, no problem. Constellation, no problem. Body, sex, race, all no fucking problem. Feeling, you know! Feeling! That is everything.’ Other novels include The Siren Celia, Gardens of Fire, Blue Blood and Kaput!Stevan Eldred-Grigg is also well known for his history books. Phoney Wars, published in 2017, probes social life in New Zealand during the murderous years of the Second World War. The book also asks whether there was any need for the country to go to war anyway. Phoney Wars is the companion volume to The Great Wrong War, which deals with New Zealand in the First World War. The sincerity and the malice, the stubbornness and the yearnings of warring New Zealanders are central to both books. Quick, vivid, democratic and questioning, the two war histories have polarised readers. ‘We have been put on trial and found wanting,’ says one reviewer. ‘Eldred-Grigg would have us believe that Germany bore virtually no responsibility,’ says another. Angry readers have gone so far as to claim that the book is a disloyal attack on the people of New Zealand. Other history books by the author include: White Ghosts, Yellow Peril, a history of New Zealand and China from 1790 to 1950; People, People, People, a very short history of New Zealand; Diggers, Hatters and Whores, a history of the gold rushes in colonial New Zealand.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.’view less