Read Around the World June 2021 – Palau

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Welcome to paradise…

Fun facts about Palau from this website:

• Palau is a Micronesian country of about 340 islands in the Pacific Ocean. It has an area of around 466 square kilometers. Koro is the most populated island in Palau while Ngerulmud located in the Babeldaob island serves as the capital of this island nation. Palau is associated with many unique facts some of which have been mentioned below:
• Women Rule Society In Palau
• Fruitbat Soup Is Considered A Delicacy In Palau
• Palau Has A Lake Packed With Millions Of Jellyfish
• Palau Created The World’s First Shark Sanctuary In 2009
• Palau Does Not Have A Military
• Giant Saltwater Crocodiles Thrive In Palau
• Palau’s Only Prison Is A Tourist Destination -The Koror Jail is the only correctional facility in Palau. Interestingly, it is also a tourist destination as the inmates here sell elaborately carved wooded storyboards at a retail facility located in the premises of the jail.
• Palau Is The World’s Most Over-Governed Place – Although Palau is a small archipelago, its entire territory is divided into sixteen states as distinct administrative regions. Each municipality of the country also has both an elected legislature and a tribal chiefdom. Thus, this country of only about 20,000 people is regarded as the world’s most over-governed place.

This month was a tough month for me I could not find a book by an author from Palau that had been translated into English nor could I find a book entirely set in Palau so instead I had to settle for reading South Sea Tales by Jack London.

South Sea Tales is a collection of stories set in and around the South Pacific. Palau is mentioned a whole once in this entire narrative and that was to say that they had the best dancers of all the islands. (Sounds like my kind of place) The stories are a mixture of folklore and adventure stories and like all story collections some stories worked better than others.

Given the time that it was written there is the usual derogatory language used to describe the island natives, that said I can forgive that slightly because the messaging of the book is to my mind anti-colonial. London shows how bad colonialism is and how damaging the relationship with greedy white men is to the native population.

It was also interesting learning about some of the beliefs and superstitions that were present in the South Pacific back in the day.

Overall not a bad story collection.

Other readers visited in the following ways:

Currey from Litsy – Vanished by Wil S Hylton – rated so-so. Non-Fiction about the after effects of war on a tiny island nation.

Did you join us this month? Let us know what you read.

Next month we are off to Ghana all hints and suggestions welcomed.