Typee

Originally published in Britain under the title "Narrative of a Four Months Residence among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas Islands", "Typee" was Melville’s first novel. Published in 1846, five years before "Moby-Dick", it was the most popular of the author’s works during his lifetime. There is an autobiographical element to the book for, like his hero, Melville also himself jumped from a ship in the Marquesas. The novel, however, is a study of innocence and the questions that surround it. Tommo, the deserter, and his friend Toby find themselves in the land of the cannibalistic Typees, who live in a virtual Eden and want for nothing...and have little respect for life... Tommo eventually finds himself torn between his infatuation for the beautiful Fayaway and a longing for civilization.