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

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.

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.

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.

What happens when an old man wakes up one morning and finds that everything around him now fills with revulsion? What happens when Faleasa Osovae, the highest ranking alii in the village of Maalaelua, feigns madness and throws away his responsibilities as a chief?

This remarkable collection of stories offers a portrait of the fascinating and complex world of Samoa. There is Salepa, down on his luck but determined to use his one talent on the reluctant inhabitants of a nearby town; Fiasola, who feels that the Miracle Man is being born inside him; the young man who disgraces his family by stabbing a European nun; and Gabriel who, on the death of his father, relives his family's tragic past. A gifted and original writer, Albert Wendt has created a world rich in imagination and dreams, reflecting the common experience of people everywhere.

The Songmaker's Chair tells of a Samoan family, the Aiga Sa Peseola, who have been in Auckland since the 1950s. Over three generations the family have intermarried with M ori and Pakeha to develop what they refer to as the Peseola Way. Central to that Way is the magnificent Polynesian exploration and settlement of the Pacific, and a songmaking tradition which Peseola Olaga, the family patriarch has inherited from his father. At the heart of the play is the love between Peseola Olaga and Malaga, his wife, and how they've struggled to give their children a good life in Aotearoa. For theirs is the Peseola Way: defiant, honest and unflinching even in the face of death.

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.