Tales of the Tikongs

In this lively satire of contemporary South Pacific life, we meet a familiar cast of characters: multinational experts, religious fanatics, con men, “simple” villagers, corrupt politicians. In writing about this tiny world of flawed personalities, Hau‘ofa displays his wit and range of comic resource, amply exercising what one reviewer called his “gift of seeing absurdity clearly.”

• Epeli Hau‘ofa, Author

  Epeli Hau‘ofa (1939–2009) was born in Papua New Guinea and educated in Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Fiji, Australia, and Canada. He worked at the University of the South Pacific’s main campus in Suva, Fiji, where he was the founder and director of the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture, established in 1997.

• Epeli Hau‘ofa takes his place alongside such writers as R. K. Narayan, early V. S. Naipaul and early Robertson Davies as an amused observer of . . . colonialism and newly independent nations.
  —Zealandia
• A South Pacific Under Milk Wood: tragicomic sketches of an unashamedly miniscule community, portraying the manifold eccentricities and weaknesses of the inhabitants through a mixture of affection, mockery, satire and ribaldry.
  —Landfall Magazine