Books set in Palau

About the literature of Palau

Palau's stories have long been told aloud, and few books by Palauan writers are available in English. Palauan, the islands' own language, shares official status with English. Spanish, German, Japanese and American administrations came in turn before independence in 1994, and much of the English-language writing about Palau comes from outsiders.

Richard J. Parmentier's The Sacred Remains: Myth, History, and Polity in Belau draws on long fieldwork to study Palauan oral traditions, chiefly rank and how the past is remembered. War is the other subject: Bill Sloan's Brotherhood of Heroes: The Marines at Peleliu, 1944 gives a detailed account of the battle for that island and its brutal terrain, while E. B. Sledge's With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, a Marine's memoir, describes the coral ridges and heat of Peleliu in its first half.