Journey through the many stories and worlds of the immortal Vela - Vela, so red and ugly at birth they called him the Cooked; Vela the lonely admirer of pigs and the connoisseur of feet; Vela the lover of song maker Mulialofa the Boneman.
Follow him down through the centuries on his travels, encountering the single-minded society of the Tagata-Nei and the Smellocracy of Olfact. Accompany him, too, as he recounts the stories of Lady Nafanua, the fearsome warrior queen, before whose powers travelling chroniclers still bow down today.
"This novel-in-verse, with its chronicles of Samoa's immortal songmaker Vela and other divine figures, is the result of a lifetime's incubation and a slow rendering that owes a debt to both indigenous oral traditions and Western literature. A book that holds you in its grip (and that grip is the enticing voice of the storyteller), Vela is a sumptuous feast that brings to mind the resonating layers of Dante's Divine Comedy or Boccaccio's Decameron. Guy Somerset, NZ Listener