New Zealand, 1909. After weeks at sea the new minister, Jack Mackenzie, arrives from Scotland with his unhappy wife and children in tow. A keen naturalist, he is more enthralled by the botanical - and carnal - delights of Dunedin than in the wellbeing of his flock. In London, eighty years later, Jack Mackenzie's descendants are middle-aged, searching for a way out of their loneliness. Olive, embittered with her loveless life, steals a baby from a crowded tube; William, distraught at the death of a pupil, abandons his job as headmaster and struggles to fill his empty days. Jay Pascal, a young New Zealand vagrant of mysterious parentage arrives in London, looking for a place where he might belong. 'Shena Mackay notices a London that passes most writers by . Her London is not a convenient backdrop - it is the capital itself, vividly and freshly set down in glancing detail' Paul Bailey, Independent 'A work of very great force' Paul Golding, Sunday Times ' Dunedin is a sustained piece of magic' Evening Standard 'Shena Mackay writes about South East London with such penetrating familiarity and ingenuity that it becomes a focus for a whole world of dreams and disasters and guilty histories' TLS Winner of a Scottish Arts Council Book Award 1992.