A while back I was con­tac­ted by Peter Roudiak-Gould who wondered if I was will­ing to write a review of his first non-academic book, “Sur­viv­ing Para­dise: One Year on a Dis­ap­pear­ing Island”. He would have his pub­li­cist send over a com­pli­ment­ary copy. Nat­ur­ally, I agreed. Apart from never refus­ing free stuff, I was also intru­iged by what Peter told me about his book.

In 2003 Peter, just 21 years old, set out from Majuro, the Mar­shallese cap­ital, to teach Eng­lish on Ujae, an outer island of the Mar­shall Islands, for one year without any other for­eigner to help or guide him. So, through the book you get to know him and his feel­ings quite well. You also get a glimpse into what life is really like on a trop­ical ‘para­dise’ island. Not everything is bliss in para­dise and Peter does a great job in giv­ing us the highs and the lows in equal measures.

Peter has to come to terms with a cul­ture that func­tions com­pletely dif­fer­ent and some­times oppos­ite to his own. A cul­ture that had to fight for hun­dreds of years just to stay alive in a harsh envir­on­ment and developed cer­tain rules to safe­guard just that survival.

But “Sur­viv­ing Para­dise” isn’t just Peters story. He also touches on polit­ical and lin­guistic mat­ters and brings you the Mar­shallese soci­ety in gen­eral and life on Ujae spe­cific­ally a little bit closer. The last chapter is ded­ic­ated to the sens­it­ive sub­ject of global warm­ing and the effects that can be felt already now on the low-lying Mar­shall Islands.

If you’ve ever lived on a tiny island out­side your own cul­ture for a while you’ll be able to identify with Peter’s exper­i­ences. There were many moments where I had to laugh out loud because some hil­ari­ous incid­ent, going spear­fish­ing for example, would remind me of my own feeble attempts or experiences.

But the book is also for you if you have never trav­elled much or stayed on a trop­ical island. “Sur­viv­ing Para­dise” will get your travel bug going into warp speed faster than you can say “Live long and prosper”!

“Sur­viv­ing Para­dise” was pub­lished on Novem­ber 3^rd this year and num­bers a bit less than 250 pages. It is avail­able at amazon.com for example and will set you back a bit less than USD 15. Money well spent I think. I can whole-heartedly recom­mend this book.

Check out the authors webpage if you would like to know a bit more about the book. Also, if you would like to know where exactly the Mar­shall Islands and Ujae are, then please fol­low the link at the bot­tom of this post.

Have you read “Sur­viv­ing Para­dise”? Let me know what you thought of it in the comments…