Event
July 20, 2017 posted by Unity Wellington

Launch | A Strange Beautiful Excitement by Redmer Yska | Thursday 3rd August from 6pm | In-store at Unity Books Wellington

Launch | A Strange Beautiful Excitement by Redmer Yska | Thursday 3rd August from 6pm | In-store at Unity Books Wellington

Unity Books & Otago University Press invite you to celebrate the launch of

A Stange Beautiful Excitement

by Redmer Yska



Thurday 3rd August
In-store at Unity Books Wellington
57 Willis Street, Wellington


How does a city make a writer? Described by Fiona Kidman as a ‘ravishing, immersing read’, A Strange Beautiful Excitement is a ‘wild ride’ through the Wellington of Katherine Mansfield’s childhood. From the grubby, wind-blasted streets of Thorndon to the hushed green valley of Karori, author Redmer Yska, himself raised in Karori, retraces Mansfield’s old ground: the sights, sounds and smells of the rickety colonial capital, as experienced by the budding writer.

Along the way his encounters and dogged research – into her Beauchamp ancestry, the social landscape, the festering, deadly surroundings – lead him (and us) to reevaluate long-held conclusions about the writer’s shaping years. They also lead to a thrilling discovery. This haunting and beautifully vivid book combines fact and fiction, biography and memoir, as Yska rediscovers Mansfield’s Wellington, unearthing her childhood as he goes, shining a new lamp on old territory.

It’s not enough to say I immensely enjoyed A Strange Beautiful Excitement… it’s simply splendid.
– Dame Fiona Kidman

…the best account I have ever read of Wellington and Karori as they were in Mansfield’s day … Vivid
and vigorous, it is a pleasure to read. – Kathleen Jones, KM biographer


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Unity Books Wellington - Proudly committed to local writing and publishing since 1967, and dedicated to keeping a dangerous variety of world literature too. 100% independent and Wellington owned. Come check us out at 57 Willis St and ask the staff for a recommendation - we know our books.

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