posted on 2024-11-12, 16:59authored byPaul Sharrad
Albert Wendt is the leading literary figure of the Pacific — that is, Oceania (not the Asian and American rim that the media usually mean by ‘Pacific’). Born in Samoa in 1939, Wendt has worked as a student, teacher and writer in Samoa, Fiji and New Zealand, and currently holds the chair of New Zealand literature at the University of Auckland. He has written stories, novels, poetry and essays over the last thirty years, all to do with the effects of colonial incursions on Island cultures and the possibilities of imagining a new complex future that will accord respect to tradition and claim a place in global modernity.