Albert Wendt

Albert Wendt, CNZM ( born October 27, 1939 in Apia, Western Samoa ) is a Samoan poet, writer and university scholar of great importance to the South Seas and the Polynesian literature of the 20th century to the present day.

Life

Albert Wendt was in Apia, the capital of the Independent State of Samoa, born as a descendant of German as Polynesian ancestors. At the age of thirteen, he moved to New Zealand, where he received a government sponsored scholarship to the High School of New Plymouth. After school, he remained in the country and earned a master's degree at Victoria University of Wellington in the History Department.

Similarly grown in New Zealand and Samoa, he retained all his life a strong bond with both states and the respective cultures, which in all his books, and also plays a role in his professional career as a teacher at various colleges; also at the newly founded first in New Zealand and in the age of 29 in Apia Samoa College together with his wife Jenny, a white New Zealander, where he soon held the post of rector.

In 1974 he took a job as a lecturer in English at the University of the South Pacific. In the following years he brought it here to the Deputy Dean.

Since 1988 he is employed at the University of Auckland; only in the English Department, and later as a professor of the newly established Institute of Pacific Studies (which the literature of the indigenous Māori and the distant Pacific miteinschloß ). In 1999 he held a visiting professorship in Hawaii.

Creation

In 1973, Sons appeared, this was the first novel of a Samoan author, as Vilsoni Here Niko knew determine even decades later. The novel, as "something European, a colonial artifact" (a little European, a colonial remnant ) was to have been a Samoan painting, written in English, which does not stop in the dialogues in front of a Samoan Pidgin, the fusion of myths, history, culture and politics - from his Polynesian heritage and the New Zealand reality of so many Exilsamoaner and other " Coconuts " in New Zealand (and thus the new world ) - this was the merit of the young Albert Wendt.

It was followed by many other publications, with his Leaves of the Banyan tree (1979 ) was best received by the critics - in 1980 he won so the price for the New Zealand Book Awards. Furthermore, published under his auspices anthologies and the literary journal Mana at the University of South Pacific. Numerous books of poems, novels, collections of short stories, a play and screenplays followed.

In 1993, the Université de Bourgogne awarded him an honorary professorship for his efforts in the cultural balance in Dijon. At times, he also worked for the UNESCO Program on Oceanic culturs.

Great influence on his work - as he himself admits also - among other things had the works of Albert Camus and William Faulkner.

Writings

  • Guardians and Wards. Study, Victoria University of Wellington, 1965
  • Sons for the Return Home. In 1973.
  • Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree: And Other Stories. In 1974.
  • Pouliuli. In 1977.
  • Leaves of the Banyan Tree. In 1979.
  • The communities of Samoa. Hammer, 1982 ISBN 3-87294-204-2 Wuppertal.
  • The Birth and Death of the Miracle Man. In 1986.
  • Black Rainbow. In 1992.
  • The leaves of the banyan tree. Zurich Union Verlag, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-293-20122-9.
  • The Best of Albert Wendt 's Short Stories. In 1999.
  • The Book of the Black Star. , 2002.

Movies

  • Sons for the return home, New Zealand, 1979, Feature Film, 117 minutes, Written and directed by Paul Maunder
  • LOOKOUT: Auckland Faa Samoa, New Zealand, 1982, documentary, 50 min, Book: Albert Wendt, Director: Keith Hunter
  • Flying fox in a freedom tree, New Zealand, 1992, feature film, 92 min, written and directed by Martyn Sanderson
New Zealand Order of Merit Margaret Mead Integrated Authority File
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