I was searching the free online library www.archive.org for a link to James Michener's "Tales of the South Pacific" to send to a friend, when quite accidentally I found a similar book I had never even heard of, "Tales from Paradise", with the byline "Memories of the British in the South Pacific". What a find !
The blurb on the backcover was already promising enough but it got even better when I began to read the book. However, I'm not much of an online reader; I need to feel the texture of the real book in my hand and even smell its slowly yellowing pages to enjoy it, and so I checked ebay, and there it was at an absolute bargain-basement price of $11.13 with postage paid from the U.K. I clicked on "Buy It Now" immediately!
According to Wikipedia, the author, June Knox-Mawer, was married to a barrister and member of the colonial judiciary who was posted to Arabia and Fiji, which inspired her writing "Tales from Paradise" as well as "A South Sea Spell", "A World of Islands", "A Gift of Islands", "The Sultans Came to Tea", as well as several romance novels set in exotic places.
She was also a well-known radio broadcaster in the U.K., and some of her "Tales from Paradise" recordings are available on www.archive.org:
| Part 1 - Going Ashore |
Compelling listening, with faint echoes of "TAIM BILONG MASTA".
