Located in the centre of the Pacific, Tahiti's closest large land mass is Aotearoa New Zealand. It is where, from Raiatea, Māori migration canoes left in what is thought to be the late 13th Century or early 14th Century.
Tahitian novelist Titaua Peu has for the last four months been French writer in residence at Randell Cottage in Pōneke Wellington. She is working on a new series of books. They present a near future marked by a reverse migration. One in which inhabitants of Aotearoa have migrated north to the island of Mangareva in French Polynesia following a great war.
Considered one of the principal French speaking writers of the Pacific, Peu is known for work that considers Polynesian society today with attention to the effects of colonialism. Her last novel the celebrated Pina, was translated into English in 2022 after being awarded the 2017 Eugène Dabit Prize, and 2019 French Voices Grand Prize in Fiction.
Peu's novels do not portray the paradise we have been taught, Pina is a raw yet tender portrayal of life for a large Tahitian family in Papeʻete, where intergenerational trauma manifests in violence, alcohol and other abuse.
Peu's first novel, Mūtism, was published in 2003. She was then the youngest-ever published Tahitian author. A response to the effect of nuclear testing on Polynesia, it is said to have caused immediate scandal.
Titaua Peu lives in Tahiti where she was recently a general manager in the municipality of Pāʻea, a commune in the suburbs of Papeʻete.
She is in Aotearoa with the support of the Embassy of France and the Randell Cottage Writers Trust. Mark Amery of Culture 101 visited her at the old colonial cottage in Thorndon.
