Black rainbow

by Albert Wendt

This startling new novel by Albert Wendt takes the form of a fast-moving allegorical thriller. Who are the all-powerful Tribunal and President? Who are the Hunters and the Hunted, and the allies from the depths of the city? Set in a future New Zealand where only the Citizen who asks no questions can achieve happiness, a renegade hero seeks to rescue his family in the State-sponsored Game of Life.

Genres: Fiction, School

267 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 1992

About the author

Albert Wendt was born in Apia, Samoa.
Wendt's epic Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979) won the 1980 New Zealand Book Awards. He was appointed to the first chair in Pacific literature at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. In 1988 he took up a professorship of Pacific studies at the University of Auckland. In 1999 Wendt was visiting Professor of Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii. In 2001 he was made Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to literature. In the 2013 Queen's Birthday Honours he was appointed a member of the Order of New Zealand.

Reviews

[Emmanuelle Baur · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was so meta it hurt my brain

[Michael Bousfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each and every one of us peers through our own prisms to glimpse this dystopian world created by Albert. The strength of this novel for me is twofold.
Firstly, Albert uses his cultural influences as an underlying thread to this story. The powerful bond of the Samoan 'aiga' (family) is what drives the protagonist through this twisting, turning, unpredictable maze as he searches for his wife and family again.
Secondly, his narrative is a fast paced, hard boiled story, that avoids the trap of portraying 'Mr Citizen' as a simple 2D caricature, but instead revealing him layer by layer with each turn of the page.
I love the punchy dialogue, the intrigue and mystery. Sure there's an essence of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, but only distant echoes, as our man has his own voice, his own vital energies that impel him into unforeseen directions in search of not only his family but himself.
Often said and truly cliché, but the truth is it's a real page turner.

[Nadezhda Macey · Rating 2 out of 5]

That was hard to read, a bad fever dream the whole time

[tessa · Rating 2 out of 5]

to think of all the good literature i could have been spending that time on...

[Felix Amutala]

This is just a useless app..it doesn't show up the text.pthooo

[Ruby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Showed me more about how love and hate are very similar!!!

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a post-modern work that attempts to blend genre and allegory in a dystopian New Zealand. What's not to love, right? Especially since many of the setting descriptions remind the reader that that part of the world came up with the Matrix. Wendt is an amazing writer, but this form does not really match his ability (or is it the other way around?). In typical post-modern fashion, the story, at the end, folds in upon itself and remains excessively open ended (excessive is the exact word for it, but I won't spoil). What redeems this style of ending is Wendt's cultural background as a Samoan and its tradition of talk-story. At the core of the post-modern aspects in the novel is the knowledge that the oral tradition has known and has used floating signifiers longer than literature has even known about them.