Auckland: The City in Literature

In his introduction to this anthology, Witi Ihimaera describes Auckland, Tamaki makau rau, as the place desired by many. The variety in this absorbing collection of short stories, poetry and extracts from novels and memoirs shows that while Auckland may not always have been desirable, it has certainly fascinated generations of very different writers, who have explored almost every part of this far-flung city. C.K. Stead and Maurice Gee, for example, go west, Tina Shaw and Diane Brown visit th…