"Pouliuli, Mauala°ivao Albert Wendt's novel that explores the intricacies of the human condition and the complexity of Samoan society, is translated by Sia Figiel into the Samoan language for the first time. It tells the story of Faleasa Osovae, from the village of Malaelua, then, Western Samoa, and explores what happens when a high chief wakes one morning with a sour bitter taste in his mouth, to discover that everyone and everything in his life up to then has lost its meaning. As the novel unfolds, our notions of sanity and madness are challenged over and over as the individual is juxtaposed against the communal. Other themes that prevail throughout the narrative are loyalty and friendship, love and duty and power or rather, the corruption of power. It is Wendt's second novel after the groundbreaking Sons for the Return Home, and it is based entirely in Samoa"--