A member of the lost generation of young English poets, artists, and writers who perished during World War I, George Calderon visited Tahiti in 1906 and wrote of his time there in this little-known masterpiece. This is the romantic Tahiti par excellence, captured in prose that eclipses the romances of Pierre Loti and the poetry of Rupert Brooke, enhanced with Calderon's own drawings. Arriving in Papeete, he found the town growing mysterious and wonderful with nightfall, graceful figures emerging from the darkness under the trees, and the air heavy with unknown spicy things. Discovering that no true Tahitian likes Papeete, Calderon left the French functionnaires, European residents with their half-Tahitian children and raffish castaways of the capital to travel the outer islands and live with the Tahitians, sharing their lives and learning their history, language, legends, and customs, recording them in loving detail against a colonial background that threatened to overwhelm them.
