Motu Tapu

A Cook Islands' dancer learns a lesson in economic survival in Auckland; a New Zealand academic encounters the spirit of a long-dead poet at Robert Louis Stevenson's grave in Samoa; an Indian teenager fights for her life in Ponsonby; the son of a Jewish refugee falls victim to anti-Semitism in God's Own County; an Englishman in Aotearoa violates tapu and pays the price. The diverse and often desperate characters in this strongly multicultural collection share one main feature: they are all Pacific Islanders, a region whose sublime physical beauty can camouflage, but not conceal, its cultural collisions and social tensions.