THE FORBIDDEN MAN

A historical novel offers an episode in the life of a Micronesian mariner.

Ever since he was a small boy, Ḷainjin heard tales about his long-absent mother. The story goes that Tarmālu led her fleet of valuable proa boats away from the island of Rālik to keep them from being destroyed in a storm, and neither she nor her proas were ever seen again. Since he’s been old enough to search for her, Ḷainjin has done just that, sailing his canoe from island to island, looking for news of any survivors from her fleet. Now he’s attempting his most ambitious mission yet: a multiday voyage to the far island of Pohnpei, accompanied by no one except his pet bird, the Chief. There, a new friend, Ewalt, takes him to the magnificent stone village rising from a reef just off the coast. “To view these massive, angular shafts emerging from the water was to worship them in awe at their grandeur,” thinks Ḷainjin. “Surely, this was the center of the ocean. Surely, this was the apex of his water world.” In the village, Ḷainjin hears of the Seekers, four survivors from Rālik who work for the lord of Pohnpei, scavenging large logs from the sea. He also hears of his mother’s capture by cannibals on the distant island of Papua. Can Ḷainjin convince the Seekers to help him discover his mother’s fate? In this prequel to Man Shark(2019), Knight’s prose displays a detailed knowledge of Micronesian culture, architecture, and seafaring techniques: “They glided swiftly across the reef toward the landing, sinking through the shallow troughs and rising on the whitecapped swells that rolled past them and crashed ahead into the entangled mangrove swamp on their right and the rocky shore to the fire-flicked village on the left.” The book takes its time getting started, and the author does not always provide the full context for everything (though he does offer footnotes explaining the frequent Micronesian words). But the novel’s mindset is so thoroughly pre-modern that readers can’t help but be swept up in Ḷainjin’s journey, learning to appreciate the poetry of the atolls, reefs, woods, stones, boats, and even the myriad types of waves.

An engaging Homeric tale of a man’s island-hopping quest to find his mother.