1979Leaves of the Banyan Tree
Albert Wendt
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.
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