Tales of the Pacific Trivia Quiz

James A Michener's 'Hawaii' was first published in 1959, the year when Hawaii became the 50th state of the United States. Like many of his works, it is made up of a series of incidents to cover a massive historical scene. Starting with the myths about the formation of the islands millions of years ago, it proceeds to consider stories relating to the arrival of the first Polynesians in the Hawaiian Islands who sailed there from Bora Bora, the development of their culture, the impact of early American missionary and commercially interested settlers, the arrival of Chinese immigrants to work the plantations and the subsequent arrival of Japanese to replace them. The final section brings the stories up to the 1950s, looking at how the islands have developed as these various influences combine.

There have been a couple of film adaptations. In 1966 Max von Sydow and Julie Andrews starred in 'Hawaii', which focused on the era when American missionaries were arriving. 'The Hawaiians', starring Charlton Heston, was released in 1970 and used material from later parts of the book, especially the development of plantations and their use of immigrant labor.

'Shogun', a 1975 historical novel by James Clavell, is set around 1600, at a time when Japanese society was in transition from a pre-modern society (the Azuchi-Momoyama shogunate, which ruled from 1568-1600) to a more modern one, the Edo period (also known as the Tokugawa shogunate), which lasted until 1868. Shogun is the term for a military ruler, and these various eras were named after the most powerful military person of the time - either their family, or where they ruled from.

Although the novel is fiction, it is based on historical characters, and depicts relatively accurately the political situation of the time, when European trade interests (and the rivalries between the Portuguese and the newly-arrived Dutch) led to interference in Japan's domestic politics, and helped determine the future of that country. The events described were based on the diaries of William Adams, an Englishman who arrived in Japan in 1600 and was later granted samurai status, becoming one of the most influential foreigners in the early part of 17th century.

Pearl S Buck's 1931 novel follows the lives of Wang Lung, his wife O-Lan, and their children, a farming family living in a small Chinese village around the start of the 20th century. The book was written while the author was living in China, where she had grown up. It was awarded the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and the citation for her 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature specifically referred to "her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces".

This was the first part of a trilogy called 'The House of Earth'. The second novel, 'Sons' (1932) followed the lives of Wang's sons, especially the youngest, following his death. The final volume, 'A House Divided' (1935) focuses on Wang's grandchildren, one of whom spends several years in the US, allowing the author to insert reflections on the cultural differences between the two countries.

Norman Mailer's first novel, published in 1948, was (at least partially) based on his experiences in the Philippines during World War II, and became the first best-selling novel about that war. The fictional island where the novel is set, Anopopei, is near the Philippines, and the American soldiers are tasked with dislodging the Japanese troops as part of the plan to recapture the Philippines.

This novel introduces a number of themes that Mailer later continued to include in his later work, These include the dehumanisation produced in soldiers by military life, both by the need to follow routine and by the imminence of death; existential loneliness; the drive for power and the need for a sense of brotherhood. His 1968 nonfiction novel 'The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel/The Novel as History' about the October 1967 March on the Pentagon continued to explore many of these same themes, this time in relation to the Vietnamese War.

Vicki Baum's 1937 novel, originally written in German with the title 'Liebe und Tod auf Bali', is set in Bali in 1906, when the southern part of the island of Bali was invaded by Dutch forces as part of their final takeover of Indonesia in a series of events locally called the 'puputan' (ending) because so much traditional culture died. The battle of Badung, depicted in the novel, saw hundreds of Balinese armed only with their ceremonial kris daggers face the gunpower of Dutch troops. The deaths of so many, including the entire royal family of Badung, consolidated Dutch control of the region.

For those unaware of the tragedy to come, the involvement of the hero (Pak) along with his family and friends comes as a confronting climax to the story, during which readers have been made familiar with their ties, not only to each other but also to the traditional culture of their land.

Cloudstreet is the name of a house in Perth WA shared by two families, the Lambs and the Pickles, in this 1991 novel by Tim Winton. The Pickles own the house which they had inherited, but rent out part of it to the Lamb family, driven to the city from their rural origin in 1943. The hard-working and devout Lambs have a contrasting view of life to that of the Pickles, who prefer to live in hope of a big break.

The lives of both families are changed by the near-drowning of Fish Lamb when he is a young boy, and we follow their entanglements over the course of 20 years, with world events in the background never really seeming to touch them much. The power of love is paramount - the marriage of Rosa Pickles and Quick Lamb is a triumph for romantic love, while Fish's ultimate swim in the river that had nearly killed him is both the result of familial love and a symbolic contribution to its strength.

Neville Shute wrote this 1957 novel about a group of people living in Melbourne Australia in 1963, waiting for the arrival of nuclear radiation (and inevitable death) moving towards them from the northern hemisphere, where a nuclear war had occurred some time earlier and wiped out all life in that region. When a signal is detected, suggesting that there may still be survivors, a group set out to investigate it, but are disappointed to find that it was just a random bit of broken equipment; they return to Melbourne to face death.

Shute made it clear that his title originated as a reference to 'The Hollow Men', a 1925 poem by TS Eliot reflecting on a sense of hopelessness in the aftermath of (what was then known as) the Great War. The first version of the novel included several passages from this poem on the title page:

"In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river ...

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."

Trent Dalton's first novel, first published in 2018, is described as a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel, but might equally be considered (as described by the author in a television interview) to be his way of coming to grips with the traumas he had himself experienced as he grew up in Brisbane. Reading his biography makes it easy to identify the real characters being portrayed, although some of the events are created to provide the novel with a plot. It was wildly successful, winning multiple awards and being translated into over 20 other languages, as it became a best-seller before being adapted by Netflix into a mini-series in 2024.

The novel depicts a lifestyle entrenched in poverty and crime, both fuelled by drugs. When 13-year-old Eli's mother is arrested, he must negotiate his way through the underworld to keep her from harm, and to keep himself and his mute brother safe. His determination to break in (and then out) of the prison where she is held provides focus, as he holds on to his optimism while dealing with the multitude of ways in which the adults in his life let him down.

New Zealand author Craig Harrison set his 1981 science fiction novel on the North Island, starting in a town near the northern coast. Geneticist John Hobon wakes to find that the town is completely devoid of humans (and all other animal life), and the clocks have all stopped at 6:12. Attempting to determine what has happened, he joins up with Api, another survivor, a relationship born of necessity that is difficult for both men. Hobson begins to suspect that he himself was the cause of whatever it was that happened; when the novel finishes with him waking once again in his room with the watch showing 6:12, the reader is left wondering what, if any, of this was all a dream - or is reality circling on itself?

This 1945 novel from Ngaio Marsh, the thirteenth to feature Roderick Alleyn (currently a Chief Detective-Inspector), is set on a sheep station in the highlands of the Canterbury region of New Zealand's South Island. Alleyn, who is still in New Zealand on counter-espionage duties, is tasked with finding out who murdered Flossie Rubrick MP three years earlier. She had gone to the wool shed to rehearse a speech when she disappeared, only to reappear stuffed inside a wool bale that was sent to auction.

This is a story that epitomises the classic murder mystery style of the so-called Queens of Crime: Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. We have an isolated setting with a limited number of characters to consider as suspects. Their responses to questioning from CDI Alleyn reveal complexities about the character of the victim and the relationships of all involved before (of course) the killer is identified.