Deze autobiografische reeks duikt in de vormende jaren van de auteur in Nieuw-Zeeland, en portretteert een kindertijd en adolescentie binnen een gezin dat materieel arm maar intellectueel intens was. Het beschrijft levendig haar eerste ontmoetingen met liefde, dood en de wereld van woorden, met name poëzie. De verhalen vangen diepgaande innerlijke ervaringen en de vorming van een artistieke ziel te midden van een unieke omgeving.
In Naar het Is-Land, het eerste deel van de trilogie, zien we Janet Frame opgroeien in de jaren dertig. Ondanks de bittere armoede en de schokkende gebeurtenissen in de familie ontwikkelt ze haar grote literaire talent en ziet ze kans een universitaire studie te beginnen.
After being misdiagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman, Janet Frame spent several years in psychiatric institutions. She escaped undergoing a lobotomy when it was discovered that she had just won a national literary prize. She then went on to become New Zealand's most acclaimed writer. As she says more than once in this autobiography: 'My writing saved me.'
New Zealand's preeminent writer Janet Frame brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections, gathered here for the first time in a single volume. From a childhood and adolescence spent in a poor but intellectually intense railway family, through life as a student, and years of incarceration in mental hospitals, eventually followed by her entry into the saving world of writers and the "Mirror City" that sustains them, we are given not only a record of the events of a life, but also "the transformation of ordinary facts and ideas into a shining palace of mirrors." Frame's journey of self-discovery, from New Zealand to London, to Paris and Barcelona, and then home again, is a heartfelt and courageous account of a writer's beginnings as well as one woman's personal struggle to survive.
New Zealand's preeminent writer brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections.