Visitants : Stow's end time novel

In the literary archive of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Randolph Stow's novel Visitants has a special place. Its setting in the Trobriand Islands off the east coast of PNG in 1959, when Australia was a decolonising administrative power, and the author's first-hand experience of that world, make Visitants a rare work on any terms, especially in the context of Australian literature, where writers have not looked in that direction much. One notable exception is T. A. G. Hungerford, author of The Ridge and the River, to whom Stow dedicates his novel in Pidgin that translates as 'I want to send this book to my friend'.