A new history book about when Germans lived in Samoa prior to independence has just been released in Apia.
Titled 'To Walk Under Palm Trees', the book is a result of five years work and contains rare photos with many pictures sourced from private family collections.
Samoan author Tony Brunt told Sara Vui-Talitu more about the hard copy book launch and his motivations for doing it.
'To Walk Under Palm Trees' image
Photo: Franz Pfeil Collection. Scan donated to the Museum of Samoa by Harald Koch, Kultur-und Heimatbund, Harzgerode,
Transcript
TONY: The launch went really well. It was at the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum in Apia, his old house up on the hill, and we had a full attendance and everyone seemed to enjoy it.
SARA: So the book is for sale now?
TONY: Yes it is, it is on sale in Apia and I think the Samoa Historical and Cultural Trust who published it will have an outlet in Auckland. So hopefully they will be able to sell their very expensive print run, as it was a pretty high quality print job done in America and the Trust wanted to do it really well. As you are probably are aware the book is freely available for downloading on the internet but the Trust wanted it sort of as a permanent momento for those readers who really didn't want to hold an iPad in their hands, but wanted to hold a real book in their hands. So that was nice.
SARA: How many copies were printed?
TONY: They only printed one thousand. So the set up costs obviously for a full colour publication like that of 250 pages was pretty high. So the price is right up there but hopefully if the Trust sells out, then clearly the next print run won't be as expensive for them.
SARA: What motivated you right at the start to take on this project?
TONY: Well I wrote the Brunt family history some years ago and I was visiting a cousin in Auckland, a distant cousin I hadn't met before to look at her Brunt stuff. And she was the daughter of a German who came to Samoa, Verna Sase who married Louisa Haliso. And I came away pretty excited about the German era of photography that Agnes had and I was able to scan that with her kind agreement and that got me interested to really wonder whether there were any other private collections in Auckland and elsewhere, that hadn't really been seen before and that could be deposited in the digital archives of the Museum of Samoa. So I put out the word and then fairly quickly it became clear that there were some magnificent collections that had never been seen before that were historically important. Over time I was able to, over several years, able to scan lots of albums with the kind agreement of the owners. And the Museum of Samoa decided rather to have them hidden on a hard drive in Apia, put them on a special website and online photo exhibition. So I worked on that in my spare time and so that was up and running. And then we thought well let's have a permanent record. So I did an ebook and pdf on most of the exhibition which is downloadable. And then along came the hardcopy book proposal by Joe Keil and the Samoa Historical and Cultural Trust in Apia.
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