Lumière's KIM LESCH made an intrepid journey to Takapuna, where she stumbled upon Semi-Permanent05 – New Zealand's largest creative event. She reports back on the highs, lows, and endless freebies on offer.

In April, Lumière Industries partners with ignite05 – a biennial festival aimed at connecting young people with their creativity, happening April 5-9 at THE EDGE® in Auckland. A leadership initiative developed by THE EDGE® Community Arts, ignite05 – new voices_new pathways is a creative incubator and powerful platform for young people to engage with and gain knowledge from national and international practitioners at the highest level of festival exhibition in this country. To learn more, visit www.ignite.co.nz, or view the media release below.

By Vladimir Nabokov
Random House, NZ$26 | Reviewed by David Levinson

ENGLISH-language debut from the Russki best known for etching a mobius strip of broken fantasy and knotted desire – in the form of a mercurial nymphet – on the conscious of perverts and scholars and perverts masquerading as scholars alike. In that novel, the backdrop was the endless, stuttering drawl of Americana – motels, diners, suburban lodgings – glazing its perversions with a violent sense of ennui; The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, on the other hand, channel-surfs across Europe and its timeline, emerging with a grand mural of the early 20th-century cosmopolitan lifestyle.