Whilst many postcolonial writers of the Pacific such as Albert Wendt and Keri Hulme are fairly sombre and bleak in tone, Hau'ofa is a satirist of modern development and lampoons the attitudes of Tikong (or maybe Tongan) society – its strict class structure, easy lifestyle and complacent parochialism. Kisses in the Nederends (1987) is a novel about the hero's picaresque quest for a cure from his anal ailments and the continuing problems of colonial exploitation. Tales of the Tikongs (1983) is a collection of humorous short stories set on the imaginary island of Tiko which satirise the absurdity and chaos of change when Western values collide with the island's indigenous traditions, thus mirroring the larger social and cultural impact of colonialism and globalisation. Hau'ofa has published several anthropological texts including Our Crowded Islands (1977) and Mekeo: Inequality and Ambivalence in a Village Society (1981) but he is also a writer of fiction. Later he took on a series of academic posts, was Deputy Private Secretary to the King of Tonga and finally became Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. He studied at the University of New England at Armidale, McGill University in Montreal and the Australian National University in Canberra where he gained a PhD in social anthropology. Epeli Hau'ofa is a writer born in Papua New Guinea in 1938, the son of Tongan missionary parents.
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