Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree

By Albert Wendt

Eight stories and a novella from a contemporary Samoan viewpoint provide a provocative study of a traditional island community coming to terms with a changing world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140102213
• ISBN13: 9780140102215
• Release Date: August 1988
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Flying fox dead

Albert Wendt is the author of novels, short stories and poetry, including, Sons for the Return Home, Flying-Fox in the Freedom Tree, Inside Us Dead, Pouliuli and Leaves of the Banyan Tree. Living in Western Samoa, Wendt recieved a scholarship to continue his studies in New Zealand. Attending Victoria University at Wellington, there he earned his M.A. in history. Wendt's style of written is difficult and a bit foreign if you would, I'm guessing of the different schoolings he had, his style is more aggressive in writing with deep feelings, comedy and tragedy, which makes him a great writer. Flying-fox in the Freedom Tree is a sequel to the Leaves of the Bayan Tree which is focused on a young Samoan boy, Pepe of Sapepe. Throughout the story Pepe is brainwashed by his two mentors, senoir chief, Toasa "Pepe's conscience" and Tagata, a city dwarf condemned of his stature to be an oddity, a flying fox 'with an eagle in the gut'. Torn between these two paradox, Pepe embarks on a life of defiance aganist his father's unholy trinity of God, Money and Success only to find that the precepts and responsiblities Toasa had taught him are impossible to practice.