The other story that unfolds alongside is less compelling, though perhaps an understandable feature of the novel. The story is carried by Kahu's charming precociousness and Granny's rants until we get to the mythic action of the climax. Well, you know where that's headed, but we need not spoil it here. Even the interventions of his iron-willed and acid-tongued wife, Granny Flowers, can not move him, despite an impending crisis that may doom his people.

He repeatedly rejects Kahu as she grows up, no matter how much she loves him and how thoroughly she embraces the customs of the tribe. Before landing, he hurled one spear ashore, which in time would save his people.Īs the modern story begins, a grandchild is being born to the son-less chief of the village, Koro Apirana, but he is crushed when he finds out the child is a girl. The original whale rider, introduced in a nearly parenthetical opening, was the spear-carrying Kahutia Te Rangi, who a great whale delivered from Hawaii to the East coast of New Zealand where he founded his tribe in the town of Whangara. Fittingly, it draws upon a Maori myth that he reworked for his daughters when they complained that boys were always the heroes of their stories.

Witi Ihimaera was one of the first Maori novelists and achieved world-wide fame when this novella was adapted into a prize-winning film.

The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera