Tales from Paradise

These colorful reminiscences from over 40 British missionaries, nurses and government officials who spent time in the South Pacific before World War II evoke the era when Britain ruled ""paradise.'' The contributors paint a lush landscape of jungle treks and royal tea parties, of disease and murder, of bare-topped natives and bizarre eating customs. Smells of coconut shells baking in the sun and the joie de vivre of the native Melanesians, Micronesians and Polynesians seem to have altered the imaginations of the colonizers forever. Until 1941, when the Japanese invaded, forcing the British to flee, European visitors entered these remote islands baffled and came away with respect for the enchanting, humane beauty of island culture. (July)