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A collection of classic short stories from the award-winning author, Albert Wendt, acknowledged as one of the Pacific's major writers. Albert Wendt's short stories, providing a complex and profound understanding of people and the world, have been read and praised in New Zealand, the Pacific and internationally. This collection brings together his classic stories published in the Flying-Fox in a Freedom Tree and the Birth and Death of the Miracle Man and Other Stories together with exciting, previously uncollected work. '. . . his stories have the tone of timeles, and very savvy, fables.' - New York Times 'A writer of international importance.' - Landfall
"Salepa, deserted by hsi wife and children, out of money and luck, is determined to use his one talent on the unfortunate inhabitants of the nearby town; Fiasola, a respected head teacher, who, in his forty-ninth year, feels the Miracle Man is being born and God has deserted him; Gabriel, now middle-aged, going through his dead father's papers, with his son, conjuring up the tragic history of his family ; and the self-styled Saviour who is obsessed with ridding his village of the Bad Smell - these are some of the ... characters who people Albert Wendt's new collection of short stories about his native Samoa. ..."--Jacket.
In Albert Wendt's first collection for over a decade, snapshots of the close and familiar contrast with strange and mythical sequences from a vast Pacific epic in progress and a vivid impressionistic montage of global travel in the late twentieth century. The rich diversity and range of Photographs is astonishing, as this complex writer moves with ease and fluency from ancient Polynesia to contemporary China to family celebrations in an Auckland garden, and through a variety of tones and voices. The collection celebrates grandchildren, family, ancestors and a heritage that stretches back to the atua; and shows a profound and compassionate understanding of the ways we now live in these islands.
Journey through the many stories and worlds of the immortal Vela - Vela, so red and ugly at birth they called him the Cooked; Vela the lonely admirer of pigs and the connoisseur of feet; Vela the lover of song maker Mulialofa the Boneman. Follow him down through the centuries on his travels, encountering the single-minded society of the Tagatanei and the Smellocracy of Olfact. Accompany him, too, as he recounts the stories of Lady Nafanua, the fearsome warrior queen, before whose powers Palagi priests and travelling chroniclers still bow down today.
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This early collection of eight short stories and a novella is vintage Wendt. Stories convey the unease of traditional island community caught up in the rapid changes of the modern world. Wendt writes with enviable directness and with deep feeling: comedy and tragedy are often hard to distinguish as his characters struggle to come to terms with their changing world.
Originally published in 1973, this story of star-crossed lovers spotlights the complex nature of love, freedom, and racism in New Zealand. Samoan writer Albert Wendt's first novel, Sons for the Return Home, has long been out of print. Yet, readers continue to respond to the clarity of vision in this simple, powerful story of cross-cultural encounter.
This startling new novel by Albert Wendt takes the form of a fast-moving allegorical thriller. Who are the all-powerful Tribunal and President? Who are the Hunters and the Hunted, and the allies from the depths of the city? Set in a future New Zealand where only the Citizen who asks no questions can achieve happiness, a renegade hero seeks to rescue his family in the State-sponsored Game of Life.
Albert Wendt is the leading writer and exponent of Pacific literature. His work is consistently different in style, politically challenging, and ranges across essays, plays, poems, stories and novels, two of which have been filmed. This book is the first full-length study of his work. There is an introduction to Pacific literature as a whole and Wendt's Samoan background. Chapters offer readings of all Wendt's major texts in chronological sequence, relating them to his essays, to literary movements of the time and to key motifs from Polynesian culture. There is an extensive bibliography of works by and about Wendt.
An epic spanning three generations, Leaves of the Banyan Tree tells the story of a family and community in Western Samoa, exploring on a grand scale such universal themes as greed, corruption, colonialism, exploitation, and revenge. Winner of the 1980 New Zealand Wattie Book of the Year Award, it is considered a classic work of Pacific literature.