World Literature Reading Group

Our World Literature Reading Group aims to showcase literature written outside of the anglophone world. On our journey we will make a variety of stops in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Oceania, tracking down the masterpieces that have otherwise been overlooked. In this fourth group, we will discuss Patricia Grace’s Potiki.

On the remote coast of New Zealand, at the curve that binds land and sea, a small Maori community live, work, fish, play and tell stories of their ancestors. But something is changing. The prophet child Toko can sense it. Men are coming, with dollars and big plans to develop the area for tourism. As their ancestral land comes under threat, the people must unite in a battle for survival.

“The republication of Potiki is a welcome reminder of how the tendency of indigenous people to respect and understand the land on which they live can offer a model for contemporary society – one needed now more than ever.” (Gerri Kimber, Times Literary Supplement)

“[Potiki] shows the factual representation of the Maori-Pakeha conflict over rights to land and cultural integrity. It recounts in detail how a small coastal community struggles to fend off unscrupulous land developers who intend to infringe upon their ancestral land and build a resort in the vicinity. [...] [It is a novel] through which Grace wants people to learn the Maori way of life, respect it, and realize why it is worth fighting for.” (Daisy Verma, HPU Indian Journal of Australian Studies)