Island Nights' Entertainments brings together a series of stories set in the islands of the South Pacific, where the apparent serenity of the tropical landscape is pierced by violence, superstition, and the moral conflicts arising from encounters between cultures. Traders, missionaries, adventurers, and native inhabitants coexist in remote settings in which greed, fear, and desire emerge with force, giving rise to extreme situations and unsettling revelations about human nature.
With a sober, precise, and richly atmospheric prose, Robert Louis Stevenson moves away from romantic exoticism to offer a critical and deeply modern view of colonialism and its shadows. Through eloquent silences and restrained tensions, these stories transform the tropical night into a living and disturbing presence, turning the book into an intense reflection on moral fragility, power, and the darkest corners of the human soul.
