Titaua Peu

Titaua Peu is a Tahitian author born in 1975 in New Caledonia, where her family settled during the nickel boom. At age 2, her family returned to Fenua to settle there permanently, in the Mission district of Papeete. Titaua attended school at the Mission sisters’ school, then later at the La Mennais secondary school and finally at the Lycée Paul Gauguin, where she passed her French Literary Baccalauréat A in 1994. After studying philosophy in Paris, she returned to Tahiti in 2002 and worked for a few years as a journalist and in communications. Her first novel, Mutismes, was published in 2003 by Haere Pö. Titaua, who was 28 at the time, became the youngest author in the Pacific. Thirteen years later, in 2016, she wrote her second book, Pina, published by Au Vent des îles. On Thursday 30 November 2017, in Paris, Pina won a prize for “best populist novel”, the Prix Eugène Dabit: a first for Polynesian literature.

Titaua Peu is a politically committed author who writes about a realistic Polynesian society, far from clichés. As part of a new generation of writers, she is one of the leading French-speaking voices in Pacific literature. Following in the footsteps of the “écrivains de l’ailleurs”, it is through her Tahitian voice that she expresses the realities of her country. Despite her refusal to assimilate and her unclassifiable style, she has established herself as a key author on the Polynesian intellectual and artistic scene.

Mistakenly viewed as autobiographical, Mutismes, her first novel,
created a sensation when it was published in 2003. Mainly because of its unacademic style but also because of the subjects it addresses, or unearths:

From colonisation to age-old unspoken words as well as the “respectful”

silences still found in Tahitian families.

With her second novel, Pina, Titaua Peu pulls off a deliberately determined tour de force which is acclaimed by the critics and seals her literary and social battle.