In evocative prose Martin Edmond recalls his experiences of growing up in rural New Zealand in the 1950s and 60s. The son of schoolteachers, Edmond’s early life was shaped by his father’s developing career and the moves it dictated: from Ohakune, to Greytown, to Huntly, to Heretaunga.

The Dreaming Land shows us the making of a thinker and a writer. Edmond documents the people, locations, and events that made a lasting impression on him, and maps the development of his mental landscape – a landscape marked by curiosity, empathy and the capacity for acute observation.

It is a book that is at once personal and universal, charting formative moments yet filled with details that resonate more broadly. The Dreaming Landpushes at the boundaries of what can be remembered to create a narrative that absorbs, illuminates and enchants.