I'll begin by nominating a longshot since it doesn't seem to be available as an ebook. It is by Epeli Hauʻofa who was born of Tongan missionary parents in Papua New Guinea and lived the end of his life in Fiji, so he is about as South Pacific an author as one can get. He attended school in all of those countries as well as Australia, gaining a Ph.D. in social anthropology, and taught at the University of Papua New Guinea and as well for the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, where he was the first Director of the Rural Development Centre based in Tonga, became the Head of the Department of Sociology and became the founder and director of the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture. He also spent some years as the Deputy Private Secretary to His Majesty King Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV (The King of Tonga) and while back in Tonga co-produced the literary magazine Faikara.
Here is his Goodreads page with more bio information.
I'm nominating his short story collection Tales of the Tikongs which is set in a fictitious South Pacific island nation based on Tonga and is about 99 pages long. From
Goodreads:
Quote:
|
Tiko, a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean, faces a tidal wave of D-E-V-E-L-O-P-M-E-N-T, which threatens to demolish ancestral ways and the human spirit. From Sione, who prefers to play cards with his secretary during work hours, to Ole Pasifikiwei, who masters the twists and turns of international funding games, all of the characters in these pages are seasoned surfers, capable of riding the biggest wave to shore. These are not stories of fatal impact so much as upbeat tales of indigenous responses to cultural and economic imperialism. Epeli Hauofa uses devices derived from oral storytelling to create a South Pacific voice that is lucid, hilarious, and compassionate in a work that has long been regarded as a milestone in Pacific literature.
|
Since it's not an ebook I'll list some Amazon pages for the book:
Amazon US
Amazon Canada
Amazon UK
Amazon Australia