My Father's Island: A Memoir

After the death of his brilliant, eccentric father, Adam Dudding went in search of the stories and secrets of a man who had been a loving parent and husband, but was also a tormented, controlling and at times cruel man.

Robin Dudding was the greatest New Zealand literary editor of his generation – friend and mentor of many of our best-known writers. At his peak he published the country’s finest literary journal on the smell of an oily rag from a falling-down house overflowing with books, long-haired children and chickens – an island of nonconformity in the heart of 1970s Auckland suburbia. Yet when Robin’s uncompromising integrity tipped into something much more self-destructive, a dark shadow fell over his career and personal life.

In My Father’s Island, Adam Dudding writes frankly about the rise and fall of an unconventional cultural figure. But this is also a moving, funny and deeply personal story of a family, of a marriage, of feuds and secret loves – and of a son’s dawning understanding of his father.

Robin Dudding would have been proud of Adam for writing this book – but maybe he would also have been horrified. My Father’s Island is an important piece of social and cultural history, seen through the lens of a family tale that is – paradoxically – both compassionate and merciless. This is a wonderfully well-told story of a life that starts out full of hope, then goes to troubling places. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, etc. And then it wasn’t. —Bill Manhire   

Adam Dudding is a reporter for Fairfax Media and has won numerous feature-writing awards. He lives in Auckland with his wife, two children, two dogs and no chickens. This is his first book.