Albert Wendt (1)
Autore di Leaves of the Banyan Tree
Per altri autori con il nome Albert Wendt, vedi la pagina di disambiguazione.
Sull'Autore
The best-known writer from the South Pacific, Albert Wendt was born into a Samoan family. He left Samoa in 1952 to attend a high school in New Zealand as a scholarship student. He later received an M.A. in history from Victoria University in Wellington. After teaching at universities in Fiji and mostra altro Samoa, Wendt now holds a professorship of Pacific studies at Auckland University. Wendt is the product of two cultures---the Samoan of his childhood and the European of his education. This inevitable clash of values figures in Wendt's first novel, Sons for the Return Home (1973), which recounts a doomed love affair between a Samoan man and a woman of European descent. The narrative also reveals how the young man feels torn between two cultural poles. Wendt's next novel, Pouliuli (1976), takes Samoan life as its subject. Sometimes called a South Pacific version of King Lear, the story follows the trials of an aged chief who tests those around him. Wendt's novel receiving the most attention is Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979), a saga of Samoan family life that moves through several decades until the post-independence period. Flying-Fox in a Freedom Tree and The Birth and Death of the Miracle Man, Wendt's two collections of short stories, take up aspects of Samoan life---its traditions, its clashes with European culture, and its disintegration. In these stories Wendt rewrites old myths to show how tradition can instruct the present. Wendt has also published poetry, Inside Us the Dead (1976) and Shaman of Visions (1984), which incorporates the tropical beauty of Samoa and its oral traditions. He also has compiled several anthologies, including collections of poetry from Fiji, Western Samoa, the New Hebrides, and the Solomons. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno
Opere di Albert Wendt
Nuanua: Pacific Writing in English Since 1980 (Talanoa) (1995) — A cura di; Collaboratore — 20 copie
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Sons for the Return Home di Albert Wendt
Wendt's first published book, I believe, and not bad for a first effort but not comparable to The Banyan or to the better stories of the Miracle Man anthology. Coming-of-age story of a Samoan young man in a relationship with a European New Zealander young woman and fairly conventional on the interracial romance.
½
I had never heard of him until recently; said to be a “senior statesman” of Samoan letters. This collection of short stories and two novellas/long, long stories reminds me of Joao Luandino Vieira’s writings about Angola: life among the poorer inhabitants and neighborhoods. Extremely well-done, though two stories are written in pidgin and I simply quit reading the last one because it was honestly too much work to make sense of it.
Wonderful examination of the roles of individuality and community within a culture. As striking as Kundera the first time I read him.
Multi-generational family saga set in Samoa from around 1900 to the 1970s. Patriarch Tauilopepe, an ambitious man, allows greed to overtake his life. It portrays a wide swath of Samoan history and provides insight into Samoan culture. Unfortunately, it is so slow in developing that I found it a chore to read. The characters are unpleasant, and the storyline reflects even more unpleasantness (e.g., rape, religious abuses, environmental devastation). The author was born in Samoa, and he provides a scathing indictment of colonialism its ongoing negative impact. It relates one horrible occurrence after the next, which is not the type of story that appeals to me.… (altro)
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- 5
- Utenti
- 377
- Popolarità
- #64,011
- Voto
- 3.7
- Recensioni
- 9
- ISBN
- 88
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- 4
