They Who Do Not Grieve

An exciting new voice from the Pacific crafts a magical blend of myth, dreams and harsh reality.

Reminiscent of Keri Hulme’s The Bone People, this stunning novel, from Samoa’s first contemporary woman novelist, weaves together the voices of three generations of women from two families. The story juxtaposes the traditional and the modern, storytelling and real life, the familiar and the strange. Their dream worlds and realities intermingle, just as the threads of history from one generation run through the next. At the centre of the novel is the Samoan woman’s tattoo, the malu, described in one of the country’s founding myths as being brought from Fiji by Siamese twins.

Sia Figiel is the first contemporary woman novelist from Samoa. Where We Once Belonged won a 1997 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book prize and has been translated into several European languages. She is also the author of The Girl In The Moon Circle and of a collection of prose and poetry, To a Young Artist in Contemplation.