Welcome aboard Sia Figiel’s spaceship that bravely and brilliantly navigates in the space of the Samoan concept of vā: an in-between where cultures and beings constantly negotiate their cohabitation...
In 1985, Inosia, a science and Star Trek enthusiast, is a wise and serious high school student from Sāmoa... But at the age of seventeen and a half, she embarks headlong into an adventure with an older man who stimulates her physically and intellectually. The thwarted love of these two soul mates goes beyond passion: this mutually initiatory journey is expressed in erotic, scientific and cultural loops, inspired by Samoan cosmology and underpinned by postcolonial observations.
Commonwealth Prize for Best Novel (Southeast Asia, South Pacific) for Where We Once Belonged, 1997
