Leaves of the Banyan Tree

Across three generations of the Tauilopepe family in the Samoan village of Sapepe, Wendt traces the corrosion of communal life by ambition and money, as the ruthless Tauilopepe rises by clearing the bush for cash crops, his son rebels, and the old order of chiefs and church gives way. The book is rooted in a real Samoa: the village and its meeting-ground, the mission church that reshaped island life, the plantations carved from the forest, and the colonial town of Apia to which the young are drawn and lost.

Tauilopepe

The village of Sapepe

Book 1

In the village of Sapepe, bound by the fa'a Samoa of chiefs, families and shared land, the ambitious Tauilopepe begins his rise to wealth and power. Wendt opens on the communal village world in order to chart, generation by generation, how money and individual greed eat away the ties that hold it together.

Book 1

inspired by The saga is set in the village of Sapepe, drawn from the real villages of Samoa; the settlement is sited on the island of Upolu the novel evokes.

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The pastor

The mission church

Book 1

The church and its pastor stand at the moral centre of the village, the imported religion now woven into the fabric of Samoan authority and respectability. Wendt shows how faith, status and money entangle, the church both a source of order and a lever the ambitious learn to pull.

Book 1

explicit The village church and its pastor embody the Christianity that reshaped Samoan life; the mission churches are real to Samoa, and the church is sited at the heart of the village.

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