In the best Rabelaisian tradition, this brilliant satire weaves a tale of improbabilities around the seat of the last great taboo. Oilei Bomboki wakes one morning with an excruciating pain that sends him anxiously searching for a cure. Unsuccessful treatments at the hands of various healers and doctors, culminating in a bizarre operation, lead the desperate Oilei to seek the help of Babu Vivekanand--sage, yogi, and conman. Through Babu's teachings, Oilei learns to love and respect the source of his own complaint. By turns savage and absurdly comic, this brilliant satire allows Hau'ofa to comment on aspects of life in a small Pacific community perched precariously between traditional and modern ways.

One of the British Empire's most troubling colonial exports in the 19th-century, James Busby is known as the father of the Australian wine industry, the author of New Zealand's Declaration of Independence and a central figure in the early history of independent New Zealand as its British Resident from 1833 to 1840. Officially the man on the ground for the British government in the volatile society of New Zealand in the 1830s, Busby endeavoured to create his own parliament and act independently of his superiors in London. This put him on a collision course with the British Government, and ultimately destroyed his career. With a reputation as an inept, conceited and increasingly embittered person, this caricature of Busby's character has slipped into the historical bloodstream where it remains to the present day. This book draws on an extensive range of previously-unused archival records to reconstruct Busby's life in much more intimate form, and exposes the back-room plotting that ultimately destroyed his plans for New Zealand. It will alter the way that Britain's colonisation of New Zealand is understood, and will leave readers with an appreciation of how individuals, more than policies, shaped the Empire and its rule.

This stimulating account of an attempt to build an intellectual bridge between the ancient navigators of the Pacific Ocean and present-day practitioners of the art and science of navigation... achieves the recording of several successful experiments... The descriptions and the comparisons made between methods make good reading."" - Journal of Navigation

Few novelists of the Pacific islands could be less derivative in terms of the real vision into the life and character of non-Western society.... Even fewer novels, Western or Third World, can reach the strength and artistic power of Pouliuli."" - World Literature Today

The focus of Richard Zgusta's The Peoples of Northeast Asia through Time is the formation of indigenous and cultural groups of coastal northeast Asia, including the Ainu, the "Paleoasiatic" peoples, and the Asiatic Eskimo. Most chapters begin with a summary of each culture at the beginning of the colonial era, which is followed by an interdisciplinary reconstruction of prehistoric cultures that have direct ancestor-descendant relationships with the modern ones. An additional chapter presents a comparative discussion of the ethnographic data, including subsistence patterns, material culture, social organization, and religious beliefs, from a diachronic viewpoint. Each chapter includes maps and extensive references.

The South African and Vietnam Wars provoked dramatically different reactions in Australians, from pro-British jingoism on the eve of Federation, to the anti-war protest movements of the 1960s. In contrast, the letters and diaries of Australian soldiers written while on the South African and Vietnam battlefields reveal that their reactions to the war they were fighting were surprisingly unlike those on the home fronts from which they came. Australian Soldiers in South Africa and Vietnam follows these combat men from enlistment to the war front and analyses their words alongside theories of soldiering to demonstrate the transformation of soldiers as a response to developments in military procedure, as well as changing civilian opinion. In this way, the book illustrates the strength of a soldier's link to their home front lives.

'Luca Antara is a book-lover's book, a graceful and mesmerizing blend of history, autobiography, travel and romance.' - JM Coetzee Part memoir, travelogue, history and part detective story, Luca Antara is a rich tapestry of history and the present. It parallels the life of the author, an emigre to Sydney, and the life of an historical figure, Antonio da Nova, the servant of a Portuguese explorer who in the 1600s sends him to find out more about Luca Antara (now Australia). New to Sydney, Martin Edmond finds himself impoverished and displaced. He earns money as a taxi driver but spends his spare time frequenting second hand bookshops trying to learn more about the history of Australia and the wider region. The people Edmond encounters in his taxi and in his search for rare books are varied and strange, offering the reader a voyeuristic glimpse into Sydney's sub-culture. Sent to discover more about Luca Antara, Antonio da Nova's crew mutiny and dump him on the West Australian coast. He is found by Aborigines, who take him on an epic walk across northern Australia. Eventually he manages to return to his master in Portugal who awaits news of his explorations. Edmond's reading centres upon da Nova, but each book he reads leads to another and the subject becomes broader and increasingly fascinating. The lives of the two men and the strange customs and unique social mores of each man's culture and time intertwine throughout the book, ending with Edmond literally walking in the footsteps of da Nova across northern Australia.