KEY POINTS:
A tiny memory stick holding the unfinished biography of one of the country's most celebrated writers is being sought by its ill author, after it was stolen from his home on Wednesday night.
Terry Sturm, a retired English professor at the University of Auckland, has been working on the first biography of the late poet Allen Curnow since 2003.
Yesterday, Professor Sturm said he woke to find five years' worth of research and a first draft saved on his laptop gone, as a result of an overnight burglary.
"It's extremely upsetting to lose all the research. I backed everything up on the computer. I was almost there, I was at the end - halfway through the last chapter," he said. "I'm not sure what to do. I've got to get a new machine and get back into it. I'm at a bit of a loss."
A serious illness had led to a greater determination to complete the biography also, Professor Sturm said.
"Yes, I'm seriously ill and I'm fighting with that. I've been managing to do some parts [of the biography] here and there and I'm determined to finish it; so hopefully this will pull at the heartstrings of the burglars," he said.
Professor Sturm, who was at home with his wife on Wednesday night, said it was unsettling to know that burglars had broken into his house and taken his laptop and wallet - the only other item taken.
"They've come through a window, to the study downstairs. It's quite hidden from outside, there's a high fence, so someone would have been poking around to have known it [the room] was there."
Once also the editor of the Oxford History of New Zealand Literature, Professor Sturm said his desire to work on a biography of Curnow - mostly known for his poetry - drew out of a passion for his work as a writer.
"I've always been interested in his writing. [He] taught me at university [and] he's never had a full-length study of his work done and this is the first time," Professor Sturm said.
"He'd been writing for 70 years. He'd be alongside Janet Frame and Katherine Mansfield. He died in 2001 and I've sort of agreed to do the first biography on him since around 2003 - I've been working steadily on it ever since."
Professor Sturm said he did not mind if the burglars did not return the laptop, but acknowledged that the return of the memory stick would be most helpful.
"The memory stick's only small - they could just put it into the mailbox. That would just make a huge difference."
