Albert Wendt Books In Order

Novels

Sons for the Return Home (1973)
Pouliuli (1977)
Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1980)
The Banyan (1984)
Ola (1991)
Black Rainbow (1992)
The Mango’s Kiss (2003)
The Adventures of Vela (2009)
Breaking Connections (2015)

Collections

Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree (1974)
The Birth and Death of the Miracle Man (1986)
The Best of Albert Wendt’s Short Stories (1999)
Ancestry (2012)

Plays

The Songmaker’s Chair (2004)

Non fiction

Lali (1980)
Nuanua (1995)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Plays Book Covers

The Songmaker’s Chair
(2004)

Non fiction Book Covers

Albert Wendt Books Overview

Sons for the Return Home

A Samoan boy who immigrates to New Zealand with his family has difficulty adjusting to his new life in an alien land.

This early collection of eight short stories and a novella is vintage Wendt. Stories convey the unease of traditional island community caught up in the rapid changes of the modern world. Wendt writes with enviable directness and with deep feeling: comedy and tragedy are often hard to distinguish as his characters struggle to come to terms with their changing world.

The Birth and Death of the Miracle Man

In these short stories of Samoan society, the author uses patois, and often employs a folk like structure to convey the distinctiveness and the universality of village life.

The Songmaker’s Chair

Auckland, one summer weekend. A family fused together by the energies of multicultural Aotearoa New Zealand faces meltdown as tensions build between migrant and New Zealand born generations, and between Samoan, Maori, and Palagi family members. The Songmaker’s Chair is Albert Wendt s first full length play.