What happens when an old man wakes up one morning and finds that everything around him now fills with revulsion? What happens when Faleasa Osovae, the highest ranking alii in the village of Maalaelua, feigns madness and throws away his responsibilities as a chief?Albert Wendt is a Samoan, this novel plays in Samoa and gives a good feel for the Samoan way of life and gives also an idea how New Zealand affected it.

    The old man was brought up expecting to marry the heiress to Kuran Station—a grand estate in the Australian Outback—only to be disappointed by his rejection and the selling off of the land. He has devoted his life to putting the estate back together and has moved into the once-elegant mansion.   McIvor tries to imbue William with his obsession, but his hold on the land is threatened by laws entitling the Aborigines to reclaim sacred sites. William’s mother desperately wants her son to become John McIvor’s heir, but no one realizes that William is ill and his condition is worsening.

    Through the tragic events surrounding the true hero of her story, Vuk, a charismatic boy that Klara is unable to not love, she is forced to come to terms with the life she was hiding from, decisions and consequences, and the inevitability and complexity of human interaction.

    It is an account of death, but also an affirmation of life. Tangi describes simply and sincerely, the Maori values placed on life; and on aroha, love and sympathy for each other.

    Their dream worlds and realities intermingle, just as the histories of each generation run through the next. At the center of the novel is the Samoan woman's tattoo, the malu, believed to be brought from Fiji by Siamese twins. The ghosts of the twins watch over the women whose lives are stained by an unfinished tattoo. The shame and grief of not completing the tattoo ceremony go hand in hand with the shame and grief of illicit love and broken promises.

    An award-winning work, Cloudstreet exemplifies the brilliant ability of fiction to captivate and inspire. Struggling to rebuild their lives after being touched by disaster, the Pickle family, who've inherited a big house called Cloudstreet in a suburb of Perth, take in the God-fearing Lambs as tenants. The Lambs have suffered their own catastrophes, and determined to survive, they open up a grocery on the ground floor. From 1944 to 1964, the shared experiences of the two overpopulated clans -- running the gamut from drunkenness, adultery, and death to resurrection, marriage, and birth -- bond them to each other and to the bustling, haunted house in ways no one could have anticipated.

    The mistress of the house, Dona Deolinda, embarks on a mission to save Ndani's soul through religious teaching, but the master of the house has less righteous intentions. Ndani is expelled from the house and drifts towards home, where she becomes the wife of a village chief. He has built a mansion and a school to flaunt his power to the local Portuguese administrator, but he abandons Ndani when he finds she's not a virgin. She eventually finds love with the school's teacher, but in tumultuous times, making a future with an educated black man involves a series of hurdles.By turns humorous, heartrending and wise, The Ultimate Tragedy is a captivating novel that brings this little-known country to colourful, vivid life.

    The end of his journey turns out to be the beginning of an odyssey in his beloved city where he finds "an insidious lawlessness creeping upon the land."Set in Manila in the last beleaguered months before the politico-military takeover in 1972, Bamboo in the Wind tells of the last desperate efforts of a people fighting to stave off disaster. Amid the escalating madness of a regime gone berserk, an odd assortment of people—a senator, a young nationalist, a dispossessed farmer, a radical activist, a convent school girl, a Jesuit scholastic—make their way along the labyrinthine corridors of greed and power. Each is forced to examine his own commitment in the face of brutality and evil, as the book conjures up scene after scene of devastation: the massacre of the demonstrators, the demolition of Sapang Bato, the murder of the sugar plantation workers, the burning of the Laguardia rice fields. And, as a climax to the mounting violence, that final September day—the arrests, the torture, and finally, the darkness that overtakes the land.

    In prose that is both raw and compelling, it tells the story of Beth Heke, a Maori woman struggling to keep her family from falling apart, despite the squalor and violence of the housing projects in which they live. Conveying both the rich textures of Maori tradition and the wounds left by its absence, Once Were Warriors is a masterpiece of unblinking realism, irresistible energy, and great sorrow.

    Behind the hilarious antics is a commentary on the power of money and the evils of charlatanism.

    The grim circumstances of Laila’s life are counter-balanced by her energy, vitality and determination to survive. Nine-year-old Laila is spirited and intelligent. She lives in a slum but she is happy: she’s got plenty of friends to play with, and is well looked after by her beloved elder sister, Jumana, while her mother works as a maid for rich families across town. But when Jumana contracts TB, their mother cannot afford the medicines that would save her life. Following Jumana’s lingering, painful death, and her mother’s emotional collapse, Laila discovers that her feckless stepfather is planning to sell her into prostitution to pay his gambling debts. Running away is her only option. Finding help from unexpected quarters, Laila makes her way to one of the families her mother worked for, and is taken into their household as a servant. There she finds unimaginable luxury, but also great unhappiness within this privileged family. At first Laila’s gift for making friends serves her well, but then disaster strikes, and Laila must flee again. But where is she running, and to whom? How can she hide from the terrible violence that threatens her? And how can she hope to find love, affection, and the chance at a normal life? Slum Child is the story of a girl forced to run alone, strong and courageous, to a future that cannot deny her happiness.

    Who are the Burghers? Descended from the Dutch, the Portuguese, the British and other foreigners who arrived in the island-nation of Sri Lanka (and 'mingled' with the local inhabitants), the Burghers often stand out because of their curiously mixed features-grey eyes in an otherwise Dravid face, for instance.... A handsome and guileless people, the Burghers have always lived it up, forever willing to 'put a party'. Carl Muller, a Burgher himself, writes in this quasi-fictional, engaging biography of the lives of his people; they emerge, at the end of his story, as a race of fun-loving, hardy people, much like the jam fruit tree which simply refuses to be contained or destroyed.

    Pawel Huelle skilfully creates a credible scenario for this influential period in Hans Castorp’s development, imagining what happened when the rational German student was exposed to the Slavonic eastern edge of the Prussian empire. He comes across people, events and ideas that anticipate some of the encounters he will experience in years to come, including an enigmatic Polish woman who becomes his obsession. Set at the dawn of the twentieth century, Castorp faithfully recreates the atmosphere of central Europe as the storm began that would lead to two world wars. Beautifully written, full of humour, mystery and eccentricity, this is a moving tribute to a masterpiece of European literature.

    In an old ruined city, emptied of most of its inhabitants, Ustad Ramzi, a famous wrestler past his prime, and Gohar Jan, a well-known courtesan whose kotha once attracted the wealthy and the eminent, contemplate the former splendour of their lives and the ruthless currents of time and history that have swept them into oblivion.

    Abandoned by his father as a child, he grows up to become an electoral assistant to the parliamentary office in Tallinn and it is in this position that Ullo witnesses first the Soviet and then the German occupation of Estonia. Forced out of his honest profession Ullo becomes involved with the Resistance but, when many Estonians flee the country, he chooses to remain. An interlude of a decade shows much has changed since the end of the War; Soviet influence is marked in the style of government and the manner of the people. The narrative unfolds in stories imparted to an unknown "author" by a 70-year-old Ullo. Just before the end, however, Kross introduces a teasing ambiguity: Ullo dies before he is able to answer the last question about his life.