Kisses in the Nederends
SynopsisPlot
In the best Rabelaisian tradition, this brilliant satire weaves a tale of improbabilities around the seat of the last great taboo. Oilei Bomboki wakes one morning with an excruciating pain that sends him anxiously searching for a cure. Unsuccessful treatments at the hands of various healers and doctors, culminating in a bizarre operation, lead the desperate Oilei to seek the help of Babu Vivekanand--sage, yogi, and conman. Through Babu's teachings, Oilei learns to love and respect the source of his own complaint. By turning savage and absurdly comic, this brilliant satire allows Hau'ofa to comment on aspects of life in a small Pacific community perched precariously between traditional and modern ways.
Story
About this book
Oilei Bomboki wakes one morning with a severe and mysterious pain in an area of the body most people prefer not to discuss. What follows is a long, increasingly absurd search for relief. He visits healers and doctors of various kinds, none of whom can solve the problem. One treatment leads to an odd surgical procedure, and when that fails too, Oilei turns in desperation to Babu Vivekanand, a figure who presents himself as a sage and yogi but also operates as a confidence trickster.
Through Babu's unconventional guidance, Oilei is pushed toward an unexpected relationship with the very part of his body causing him trouble. The novel uses this premise to build a sustained comic satire in a tradition sometimes compared to Rabelais, the sixteenth-century French writer known for grotesque bodily humor and social criticism.
Epeli Hau'ofa sets the story in a small Pacific island community caught between older customs and newer ways of living. The comedy is often sharp and exaggerated, but it carries observations about authority, healing, modernity, and the uneasy coexistence of local and imported knowledge. This edition also includes an interview with Hau'ofa titled A Promise of Renewal.
