Author(s): Manisha Anjali

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A remarkable debut collection by an Australian and New Zealand poet of Indo-Fijian background, the descendant of indentured labourers.

Naag Mountain is a journey across oceans, from the Asian subcontinent to the South Seas, a journey about human trafficking on sugar plantations in Fiji and Australia, which brings to life the histories and events, the stories and myths of a displaced and exploited people, that have been lost in time or forgotten or hidden from view. It is a journey in which the living, the dead and the natural world communicate in music, language and dream.

Manisha Anjali’s first collection is an intensely imagined recovery of a little-known cultural inheritance, in which historical figures, folk characters and mythical entities feature in a procession coloured by the metaphors of poetry and the surrealism of dreams. A community in northern Queensland, whose ancestors were indentured by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, receive messages from their friends across the Tasman. A mysterious reel of film washes ashore, depicting harrowing violence on sugarcane plantations under the indenture system. The actors walk out of the film and into the world of the living. The community walk into the projection.

Naag Mountain is an exquisite work that resounds with the reminder of what can be reclaimed when a community moves towards their awakening: their dreams, their futures. This is a distinguished debut collection from a poet whose vision is urgent and consuming.
Eunice Andrada

Epic in nature, rich in detailed imagery…Naag Mountain is an important and timely contribution to Pacific Literature by one of its emerging gifted storytellers. This is a portentous beginning.
Selina Tusitala Marsh