Typee: A Romance of the South Seas

Typee, a Romance of the South Sea was Herman Melville's first book. It is an idyll of four months among primitive South Sea islanders. It won him great fame during his life. Melville always mixes his own extraordinary personal experiences with later research to produce powerful and imaginative works. TYPEE shocked its original audience with a truthful account of Polynesian tribal life. It also defined the author: caught in its glare like a fly in amber, he stands frozen before the exotic, sharply focused on it, yet forced to remain forever alien. "A vivid picture of a civilized man in contact with the exotic dream-like life of the tropics."