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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."