Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Guardian

    The 'real Lord of the Flies': a survivor's story of shipwreck and salvation

    Sione Filipe Totau, known as Mano, was one of six Tongan boys who spent 15 months marooned on a Pacific island. Suddenly the world wants to hear his story
    by Kate Lyons May 13, 2020 5 minutes
    Mano Totau was one of six Tongan youths shipwrecked on Ata Island for 15 months, an ordeal described in a recent article about the ‘real Lord of the Flies’ article. Photograph: David Kelly/The Guardian

    The past few days have been something of a whirlwind for Sione Filipe Totau.

    The 73-year-old Tongan, who is commonly known as Mano, was living quietly in the Australian city of Brisbane, when this week he was catapulted into the global spotlight, after the story of how he and five of his friends survived for more than a year on a deserted Pacific island became a runaway hit.

    The article, an excerpt from Rutger Bregman’s Humankind, was published in the Guardian and titled “The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for”. It details how in 1965, Totau and his five friends, teenagers who were bored with their life at boarding school in the Pacific nation of Tonga, stole a fishing vessel and set off on an adventure. A huge storm destroyed their boat and after eight days drifting at sea, they washed up on a remote, uninhabited island.

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Guardian

    The Guardian3 min readWorld
    Historians Come Together To Wrest Ukraine’s Past Out Of Russia’s Shadow
    The opening salvo in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year was not a rocket or a missile. Rather, it was an essay. Vladimir Putin’s On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, published in summer 2021, ranged over 1,00
    The Guardian4 min read
    The Golden Bachelor’s Older Singletons Have Saved A Franchise
    Strange as it may sound, one of the hottest shows on TV this fall has been … an old dating series now catering, for once, to senior citizens. That would be The Golden Bachelor, a new spin-off of America’s pre-eminent dating series in which a 72-year-
    The Guardian4 min read
    Whether In Song Or In Silence, Shane MacGowan Exuded The Very Essence Of Life
    Shane MacGowan and I sat in near silence for two hours last year. We were at his home, just outside Dublin. I’d been warned by his wife, the writer Victoria Mary Clarke, that he was depressed and anxious, not really in the mood to talk. But nothing c

    Related