Bougainville

Wisdom Upon A Peak In Bougainville

As a novel, “An Affair of Men” has its merits; but as a novel abou Bougainville, New Guinea, it is something else again.

THE author is a New Zealander, Errol Brathwaite, and the novel is a prize-winning entry in the Centennial competition held by the Otago Daily Times, Dunedin, in 1961. Brathwaite flew with the RNZAF in the Pacific theatre of war and during that service, in No. 3 Bomber Reconnaissance Squadron, saw something of the country he writes about, as well as New Britain and Guadalcanal.

However, the Bougainville back ground is purely a vehicle for the story; almost anywhere where the Japanese fought their war would have done as well. And Sedu, the fabulous native headman, we have met many times before in many novels—as the wise old Mandarin, perhaps, surveying dismayed the handiwork of some War Lord; as an Indian messiah, regarding life and men more in sorrow than in anger; as a mysteriously remote Lama, in some far flung Shangri-La. In fact, practically anywhere else but in Bougainville.

Not even Cargo-culting Hahalis seems to have thrown up anything as exotic as Sedu, the Rock of Ages,

black, Bougainvillean Christian w was a qualified doctor of medici: from an Australian medical schoo The crux of the novel is the ch of personalities, wills and ideolog between Sedu and the Japanese An Officer, Captain Itoh, and in t context it doesn’t matter mu whether Sedu is a Bougainville villa headman or the Dalai Lama Shangri-La.

The stage is set when an Alii plane is shot down in south Bouga: ville and the survivors set off towai their own base, helped by frienc natives.

His Waterloo It is Captain Itoh’s job to fen them out and capture them and tl he sets out to do with his own smi detachment of soldiers. In nati villages where he gets co-operati( he passes rapidly on; where he ge stubborness he also passes on, b leaves behind death and destructio Finally he comes, in the high range about 12 miles from Mt. Bagan to the village of Sipuri, and here 1 meets his Waterloo, in the perse of Sedu.

When war broke out, Sedu h<

living on the coast but he re el all his people to the mountains > they embarked on a campaign natical neutrality backed up by tian principles. The whole of s people go about smiling with ous fortitude, no matter what; they miss no opportunity of ng the other cheek—a very y accomplishment in the face he barbaric behaviour of the icse. time goes on, Itoh and Sedu ss philosophy, religion and ed subjects and Itoh, against will, finds himself behaving a like a Christian. Something ;rious, too, binds him to Sipuri; s he tries to leave the village, to find he has walked in a * and is back in it. And, ne by one his men go off in ent directions and are killed or pear, he and Sedu are left to out the battle of philosophy irtunately Brathwaite is a writer not an evangelist—Sedu does not jade Itoh to see the Light; nor ve leave them singing Onward stian Soldiers, in chorus. In the Itoh remains Japanese and puts 2nd to the story in Japanese on.

T AFFAIR OF MEN. Published by Collins. 20/-.)

[?]UL WRITER. Patricia Hopper, wife of [?]l businessman Alex Hopper, and mother three, combines her interest in Rabaul Advisory Council affairs (she is a [?]er) with a lively interest in New Britain [?]ry. She is currently working on a book on "Queen Emma".