London from home

New Zealand author Emily Perkins leans out to close a window at her publisher’s in Soho and “raising her voice over a building site, takes a deep breath of London air to say, ‘It’s great to be back’.” Perkins spent 11 years in London writing about New Zealand. It wasn’t until three years ago, after moving back home to Auckland, that she properly started work on her first London novel, About My Wife. This is also Perkins’s first novel about pregnancy and parenthood, written from the perspective of a man. It was another form of distance that she found liberating, she says. “After 10 years I feel I know London now. To be able to write about it from New Zealand is great because I’m  really able to inhabit this imaginary London.” Perkins teaches creative writing at Auckland University and presents The Book Show on Television New Zealand’s TV One.