I had never heard of him until recently; said to be a “senior statesman” of Samoan letters. This collection of short stories and two novellas/long, long stories reminds me of Joao Luandino Vieira’s writings about Angola: life among the poorer inhabitants and neighborhoods. Extremely well-done, though two stories are written in pidgin and I simply quit reading the last one because it was honestly too much work to make sense of it. ( )