Out of the Vaipe, the Deadwater: A Writer's Early Life

'Death is coming closer to me. And in my dark dreams of fierce presences trying to break into my sight to smother me, I'd wake shouting, with Reina holding and consoling me.' For many years one of the Pacific's leading writers, Albert Wendt ventures into fascinating and deeply personal new territory in this ground-breaking BWB Text. He recalls his boyhood in the Vaipe, a suburb of Apia in Samoa, just metres from the local cinema, and his life-changing schooling as a scholarship student at an initially foreign New Plymouth Boys' High School. Wendt also explores his fascination with traditional pre-Christian Samoan religion, banned by the missionaries, and while he laments its decline and partial disappearance, he also celebrates its richness and depth. Extracts from Wendt's novels such as Ola and The Mango's Kiss provide sometimes startling illustration.