New from Albert Wendt: The Adventures of Vela

“We are the remembered cord that stretches across the abyss of all that we’ve forgotten,” sang Vela.

Journey through the many stories and worlds of the immortal Vela, the Samoan song maker, poet, and storyteller—Vela, who was 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. Follow Vela down through centuries as he encounters the single-minded society of the Tagata-Nei and the Smellocracy of Olfact and recounts the stories of Lady Nafanua, the fearless warrior queen, before whom travelling chroniclers still bow down today.

The Adventures of Vela, by Albert Wendt, is a Pacific epic.

“The Adventures of Vela is a tour de force that drives you to reconsider not only relations between the divine and the earthly, the dominated and the domiant, and the teller and the told, but also how narrative can sing its heart out.” —The Listener

October 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3420-3 / $26.00 (PAPER)