Potiki - (Talanoa: Contemporary Pacific Literature) by Patricia Grace (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This compelling novel will resonate for people everywhere who find their livelihood threatened by "Dollarmen" -- property speculators advocating golf courses, high rises, shopping malls, and tourist attractions. In Potiki, one community's response to attacks on their ancestral values and symbols provides moving affirmation of the relationship between land and the people who live on it.

From the Back Cover

Winner of the 1987 New Zealand Fiction AwardThis compelling novel will resonate for people everywhere who find their livelihood threatened by ""Dollarmen"" - property speculators advocating golf courses, high rises, shopping malls, and tourist attractions. In 'Potiki', one community's response to attacks on their ancestral values and symbols provides moving affirmation of the relationship between land the the people who live on it.

Review Quotes

[Grace] is at her best portraying the lives of her characters, from their daily tasks (eel-fishing and cooking) to the stories they tell-both real hard-luck stories and ancestral myths.... The writing here is often elegant in its simplicity (the first-person sections in particular are beguilingly direct....) and the information about Maori life intriguing.-- "Publishers Weekly"

What I enjoy most about the writing of Patricia Grace is the warmth of feeling, the depth, the aroha; the delight in the quirks of people and the poignancy; the sensitivity of the writing and the poetic quality of her descriptions.-- "Zealandia"