Books set in Oceania: 18 novels & travel books

Tahiti

1991
Island of Shattered Dreams
1991 · Chantal Spitz · novel
The first Polynesian novel: a family over four generations, up to the nuclear tests.
1932
Mutiny on the Bounty
1932 · Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall · novelMatavai Bay, Tahiti
1788: the Bounty’s five months at Tahiti, the mutiny, and the island the men return to.
1919
The Moon and Sixpence
1919 · W. Somerset Maugham · novelalso Paris
A London stockbroker turned painter, after Gauguin, ends his days in Tahiti.

1974
Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature
1974 · Thor Heyerdahl · memoirFatu Hiva, Marquesas Islands
1937: Heyerdahl and his young wife try to live as islanders on Fatu Hiva.
1896
In the South Seas
1896 · Robert Louis Stevenson · travel
Stevenson’s yacht reaches the Marquesas, then the atolls: chiefs, missions, tales.
1846
Typee
1846 · Herman Melville · novelNuku Hiva, Marquesas Islands
Two sailors desert at Nuku Hiva and live among the Taipi, as guests or captives.

2005
The Wreck
2005 · Déwé Gorodé · novel
The first Kanak novel: a woman faces buried violence amid the independence struggle.
1998
Cannibale
1998 · Didier Daeninckx · novelalso Paris
1931: Kanaks shown as cannibals at the Paris Colonial Exhibition, and one man’s escape.
1980
Chân Đăng
1980 · Jean Vanmai · novel
1930s: Vietnamese contract workers in the nickel mines of colonial New Caledonia.

2005
The Secret River
2005 · Kate Grenville · novelHawkesbury River, New South Wales
1806: a transported London bargeman takes land on the Hawkesbury, against its own people.
1923
Kangaroo
1923 · D. H. Lawrence · novelThirroul, New South Wales
An English writer by the Pacific at Thirroul, drawn into Sydney’s political plots.

1987
The Songlines
1987 · Bruce Chatwin · travel
Chatwin in Alice Springs and the desert, learning the songlines that map the land.

1922
The Garden Party
1922 · Katherine Mansfield · stories
Wellington’s hill gardens and bays, and a girl who leaves a party for a dead man’s house.