Vela is the result of a lifetime’s incubation and a slow rendering that is in debt to both indigenous oral traditions and Western literature.

The novel traverses centuries as its narrator-poet makes Vela acutely present – along with Nafunua, the Samoan goddess who brought about peace; Nei, a society that shares a single mind; and Olfact, a society that promotes smell as the channel for human relations. But to reduce the book to a skeletal synopsis is to undermine the scope of Wendt’s achievement: Vela is a sumptuous feast that brings to mind the resonating layers of Dante’s Divine Comedy or Boccaccio’s Decameron.

Each line bears the melody of a story told aloud, an infectious fluency that is characterised by the short lines of poetry and the storyteller’s breath in the white space that breaks each line. Samoan words add to the musicality, and while some readers may regret the absence of a glossary for the non-Samoan speaker, the words gradually acquire semantic presence as the narrative proceeds.