WELCOME REPRINT OF MAORI STORY

Southland Times, Issue 23740, 11 February 1939, Page 14

WELCOME REPRINT OF MAORI STORY

PLUME OF THE ARAWAS. By Frank O. V. Acheson. A. H. and A. W. Reed, Dunedin and Wellington. Price 4/6. Judge Acheson’s “Plume of the Arawas” was first published in 1930 and was welcomed as a valuable contribution to New Zealand literature. It tells a story of battle and adventure in the period of tribal wars when the Arawas swept down from the north under the leadership of young Manaia, descendant of a proud line of arikis. The background of Maori culture and history is built up unobtrusively, and the smell of the bush is in the story from the opening lines. To project the older Maori outlook against the framework of a story that brings the bustle and daily life of the pa and at the same time develops a sense of tribal history requires imagination and literary skill. There are times, perhaps, when the flow of Maori rhetoric takes an artificial sound; but the pace is sure and swift in the moments of action, and the romance between Manaia and Reremoa is treated with sympathetic insight. This book has been out of print for some years. The publishers are to be commended for making it available in an attractive format and at a reasonable price, thereby introducing it to the new and big public that now gives grateful attention to New Zealand literature.