and spanked

Novelists - thanked and spanked

A Polish novel about New Zealand is quite unusual. A Polish novel about New Zealand in the 1860 s, and published in 1872, is a unique find in the history of New Zealand literature.

Because Tikera, or Children of the Queen of Oceania, was written in Polish, it went unread by New Zea landers, and has had no influence on writing in New Zealand.

This 1972 edition is the first English translation of Tikera, and it brings to English-speaking readers perhaps the best New Zealand novel of its period,. It is edited and introduced by Dennis McEldowney and translated into English by Jerzy Podstolski.

Wisniowski, the author, was born in 1841 in Poland. At the age of 17 he started wandering throughout Europe and the Pacific. He was in New Zealand for about a year, in 1864-65, half-way through 10 years of conflict between the pakeha set tlers and some of the Maori tribes.

Tikera is more than just a historical oddity which happened to have been written in Polish. Wisniowski, through the eyes of his main character, a young Polish seaman, gives us excit ing impressions of New Zealand during the time of the Pakeha-Maori Wars of the 1860 s. Very perceptive glimpses into pakeha attitudes towards Maoris are given, also authentic descriptions and analyses of a Maori village, life in Auckland and New Plymouth in those unsettled pioneer times when most pakeha settlers were set on acquiring land at the expense of the Maori tribes. It is obvious from the novel that Wisniowski pos sessed some of the European arro gance towards so-called “natives”.

However, his treatment of his Maori characters is fairly detached and sympathetic, ahead of its time.

Wisniewski’s attitude to the Wars is quite definite: he condemns them as wars of conquest, attempts by settlers to suppress the Maori people and take over their land.

Tikera is more a series of episodes than a well-rounded novel. Most of the episodes are alive with great imaginative power and design; some are sketchily written and, con sequently, monotonous. Asa whole, the novel is well worth reading though. It is a lively adventure story

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which also gives us much information about New Zealand at that time.

Tikera is a unique discovery for English-speaking readers, especially those readers interested in the history of the New Zealand novel. We must thank Jerzy Podstolski, a senior lec turer at the Library School in Wel lington, for bringing to us, in Eriglish, this novel.

Dennis McEldowney provides us with a very learned and helpful in troduction to this edition of Tikera.

He puts Tikera into its rightful place in the history of New Zealand litera

ture.-

Albert Wendt.

(TIKERA, by Sygurd Wisniewski. Oxford University Press. $7.15.)

Perils Of Paul

Even for someone whose know ledge of the Pacific comes out of a school atlas, Scatter Pearls, a novel by newcomer lan Short, is a fantastic clutter of the impossible. Middle-aged Peter, the hero, standing on the coast somewhere near CofFs Harbour, northern NSW, one day sees an Islands canoe drift in. It contains one unconscious female and some oyster shells which not only have sustained her all the way across the Pacific but contain valuable pearls.

When the heroine opens her eyes she calls Peter “Paul”. Now, many years before, Peter and his twin brother Paul had been sailing their yacht around French Polynesia when it had been wrecked in a storm. In order to save his brother, Paul had nobly cast himself off on a hatch cover and left Peter alone in the 7 ft dinghy, so it had been assumed that Paul had been drowned.

But with this providential arrival of the woman, Peter perceives at once that it may not have been so.

Nor was it. Paul, on his hatch-cover, had finally made a deserted island (which had a lake full of pearls in its centre) and years afterwards the woman, sole survivor of a wrecked cruise ship, was cast up on the same island.

She and Paul lived happily for the next three years and then, unfor tunately, a bit of cave fell on Paul, squashed him flat and his girl friend thereupon commenced her 3,000 mile canoe journey which, naturally, took her straight to Paul’s old home town,

with Peter on the beach waiting for her.

The story thereafter concerns itself with the return to Pearl Island to re trieve Paul’s pearls and the efforts of some baddies to prevent it.

The writer is said to be a promis ing young Australian author. So he might be if he confined himself to things he knows about. In the mean time he might take another look at that school atlas. Pearl Island, he says, was somewhere in 120-135 E

Long. According to our navigation that puts it somewhere south of Dar win or in NW Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. On the other hand, if he really means W. Long, that would locate the island somewhere around the French nuclear test zone in the Tuamotus. A lousy choice of location, whichever way you look at it, even

for a lake full of pearls.

Judy Tudor

(SCATTER PEARLS, by lan Short.

Hale. $4.30).