Station to Station
Redmer Yska
Beautifully written and illustrated, Katherine Mansfield's Europe is part travelogue, part literary biography, part detective story and part ghost story. Guided by Mansfield's journals and letters, author Redmer Yska pursues the traces of her restless journeying in Europe, seeking out the places where she lived, worked and – a century ago this year – died. Along the way, he meets a cast of present-day Mansfield devotees who help shape his understanding of the impressions Mansfield left on their territories and how she is formally (and informally) commemorated in Europe.
In Katherine Mansfield's Europe, Yska takes us to the villas, pensions, hotels, spas, railway stations, churches, towns, beaches and cities where Mansfield wrote some of her finest stories. Hauntingly, these are also places where she suffered from piercing loneliness and homesickness, rooms in which she endured illness and extreme physical hardship, windows from which she gazed as she grappled with her mortality.
With maps and stunning photography, this engaging and well-researched book richly illuminates Katherine Mansfield's time in Europe and reveals her enduring presence in the places she frequented. Whether familiar or unfamiliar with Katherine Mansfield's work and life, readers will find Yska's account of her travels and travails in Europe freshly informative and deeply moving.
'Redmer Yska, once again, brings his sharp eye, his wry personal take, to the facts and legends of Katherine Mansfield. In A Strange Beautiful Excitement, he showed how we can no longer truly understand her apart from the city that was first hers, and then his own. Now, with her stories and legends in hand, he traces how in Europe she survives in places that were deeply important to her, and where still she trails devotees and alternative facts. This book is a delight - never solemn, always alert to even the faintest whispers, among buildings and memories and her swathes of slightly evangelical 'true believers.' – Vincent O'Sullivan [co-editor The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield]
'I've just finished reading your book and I'm absolutely blown away by it. What a wonderful journey you take us on.' – Kathleen Jones [author of Katherine Mansfield: The storyteller]
Author
Redmer Yska is an award-winning writer and historian based in Wellington. He has published books on a range of subjects, including New Zealand youth culture, Dutch New Zealanders (like himself), a biography of Wellington City and a history of the tabloid newspaper, NZ Truth. This is Yska's second book about Katherine Mansfield. His first, A Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield's Wellington (Otago University Press, 2017), was longlisted for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Publication details
Softcover with jacket
230 x 170mm, 272pp
ISBN 9781990048531, $50
IN-STORE: 2 May 2023
Review and Interviews
Newsroom Best Illustrated Nonfiction books of 2023: 'Yska’s book reads like a personal essay, something creative and original, in this study of KM in Europe.' – Steve Braunias Read
Interview: David Herkt interviews Redmer Yska about his just-released book on the European travels of Katherine Mansfield Read
Interview: Redmer Yska speaks to Ruth Todd for Bookenz, Plains FM Listen
Feature: Bess Manson speaks to Redmer Yska about Katherine Mansfield's Europe for Stuff NZ Read
Interview: Redmer Yska speaks to Kathryn Ryan about Katherine Mansfield's Europe for Nine to Noon, RNZ Listen
Review: Harry Ricketts reviews Katherine Mansfield's Europe for Nine to Noon, RNZ Listen
Review:'This ranging across genre, across landscape and time-scape, all held together with sharp observation and narrative flair, is quintessential Yska, doing what he does best'
'This communion between Mansfield, Yska, the 'foot soldiers', and the reader, is enhanced by the book's lavish production, which includes many stunning photographs, maps, and ephemera, all reproduced on thick, glossy pages.' – Sarah Russell reviews Katherine Mansfield's Europe: Station to Station by Redmer Yska for Aotearoa NZ Review of Books Read
Review:'This is a riveting footsteps-biography which will send readers back to Mansfield's work with an even sharper sense of wonder that, under these dismaying circumstances, she managed to write anything at all. The lively evocation of the various journeys, past and present (enhanced by the book's stunning photographs), the extensive archival research, the energising contributions of the modern-day guides: these represent the 'skills and crafts and sensible magic' that Yska so persuasively practises to bring back Mansfield's 'unattainable past' and make it 'alive in the present.'' – Harry Ricketts reviews Katherine Mansfield's Europe for Kete Books Read
Review: 'It's an imaginatively conceived, prodigiously illustrated, beautifully designed and skillfully executed project which provides yet another lens through which to view a character who has been sometimes hard to see but who is being brought more clearly into focus thanks to endeavours such as this.' – Paul Little reviews Katherine Mansfield's Europe by Redmer Yska for North & South Magazine June 2023 Edition Find out more
Feature and Extract: Susanna Andrew writes about Katherine Mansfield's Europe by Redmer Yska for the June edition of North & South. This edition also features an extract and illustrations from the book Find out more
Review: 'We are with her, at her side, in her skin, seeing what she sees, feeling what she feels. That is an effect of her letters and journals, which are frequently quoted. But Yska's writing enhances them. He is part scholar, part literary historian, but he is also a journalist of the highest calibre, who has gone to new, previously untapped sources.' – CK Stead reviews 'Katherine Mansfield's Europe: Station to Station' by Redmer Yska for ReadingRoom, Newsroom Read