The Mango's Kiss

Book excerpt: An epic novel stretching out from Samoa to Europe, America and New Zealand, from the turn of the nineteenth century, through the First World War, the Spanish Influenza Epidemic and beyond. Since the 1960s, Albert Wendt has created a profound and fabulous Pacific world that is uniquely his own. A fictional world focused on Samoa and New Zealand and reaching out to the centres of the world, a world inhabited by the richest menagerie of characters in Pacific fiction, characters whose lives and stories reflect our own complex depths. Sixteen years in the writing, The Mango's Kiss is a striking addition to that world. Pele's first moment of remembered consciousness is the morning kiss of the mango fruit on her cheek. That kiss brings with it the awareness of mortality, pleasure and pain. It is a gift from her father, Mautu Tuifolau, the local pastor, the man she adores. Love is never simple, though, and in this story of the struggles and passions of Pele and her family, it must adapt to the growing world that stretches out from village life in Samoa to the cities of Europe, America and New Zealand. It must accommodate the conflicts of a gifted family and the attraction of extraordinary outsiders, from a famous English writer to an American anthropologist, missionaries and the trader Barker, with his quest for gold and epic tales of an adventurous past. And it must encompass the family's links to the ancient gods of pre-missionary times and move through the turn of the nineteenth century, the First World War, the terrible Spanish Influenza Epidemic and beyond.