Tales of the Tikongs
Hau'ofa (Kisses in the Nederends) serves up a delightfully fresh and funny collection of tales about his South Pacific homeland. In this first book of stories, he wryly describes daily life on the tiny isle of Tiko where "truth is flexible and can be bent this way so and that way so." The book contains comic, well-developed characters like Ti Pilo Simini (in "The Wages of Sin"), a "weedy little man . . . who may be seen with two or even three cigarettes stuck between his lips," but Hau'ofa's talent is most evident in his satires of human frailties. In "Blessed Are the Meek," Puku Leka receives "excellent training in bowing and bending and crawling" from his family in preparation for a farmer's life. Hau'ofa also skillfully parodies the "development" of underdeveloped countries. In "The Seventh and Other Days," an Australian "Overseas Expert" named Dolittle is hired to "look into the feasibility of making Tikongs work on weekdays" but despairs after speaking with a VIP who fritters away the office hours playing cards with his secretary.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.