Novel · A way to begin
Leaves of the Banyan Tree
Albert Wendt · 1979
Synopsis
In the village of Sapepe, in Western Samoa, Tauilopepe, head of the family, devotes himself to making the family plantation prosper and to winning wealth and rank, under the motto “God, money and success”, at the expense of his wife and his son. Pepe, this rebellious son, is expelled from the town school after helping to set fire to a Protestant church hall. The novel then follows Lalolagi, the grandson, raised by Tauilopepe and sent to boarding school in New Zealand.
Context
Begun in the early 1970s and set aside because of its length, the novel came out in Auckland from Longman Paul in 1979 and received in 1980 the Wattie Book of the Year Award. It is built in three parts, one per generation, and shows Samoan society grappling with colonisation, before and after independence. It appeared in the United States under the title The Banyan. Jean-Pierre Durix translated it into French under the title Les Feuilles du banian, published in Papeete by Au vent des îles in 2009.
Who it is for
For understanding twentieth-century Samoa through a great family saga, between loyalty to the elders and a taste for profit.
Prizes and reception
Awarded a prize in New Zealand as early as 1980; presented by its French publisher as the novel that made Wendt the great writer of the Pacific.
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