Easter Island (Rapanui)

A Companion to Easter Island by James Grant Peterkin. ISBN 9789563326413. Recommended retail price $29.95.

Easter Island has long captured the imagination of all visitors who have set foot on it, with a rich history and archaeological wealth greatly disproportionate to its small size. Almost 300 years since its discovery by the outside world, very much more is now understood about this once mysterious island and its unique culture.

With over ten years of experience in studying and leading tours on Easter Island, James Grant Peterkin provides the essential guidebook, aimed at ensuring you get the most of your visit. Soft cover, 166 pages. Published in 2010.

Easter Island by International Travel Maps. Recommended retail price $8.95.

This 1:30,000 scale map of Rapanui, the navel of the world, shows everything any visitor could need. All the moai (stone statues) are shown as are petroglyphs and other artifacts of cultural interest. If you are headed to Easter Island this map is an essential.

In this extraordinary fiction debut – rich with love and betrayal, history and intellectual passion – two remarkable narratives converge on Easter Island, one of the most remote places in the world.

It is 1913. Elsa Pendleton travels from England to Easter Island with her husband, an anthropologist sent by the Royal Geographical Society to study the colossal moai statue, and her younger sister. What begins as familial duty for Elsa becomes a grand adventure; on Easter Island she discovers her true calling. But, out of contact with the outside world, she is unaware that World War I has been declared and that a German naval squadron, fleeing the British across the South Pacific, is heading toward the island she now considers home.

Sixty years later, Dr. Greer Farraday, an American botanist, travels to Easter Island to research the island’s ancient pollen, but more important, to put back the pieces of her life after the death of her husband.

A series of brilliant revelations brings to life the parallel quests of these two intrepid young women as they delve into the centuries-old mysteries of Easter Island. Slowly unearthing the island’s haunting past, they are forced to confront turbulent discoveries about themselves and the people they love, changing their lives forever.

Easter Island is a tour de force of storytelling that will establish Jennifer Vanderbes as one of the most gifted writers of her generation. Hard cover, 310 pages. Published in 2003.

Rapa Nui: The Easter Island Legend on Film by Kevin Reynolds and Tim Rose Price. Photographs by Ben Glass. Published by Newmarket Press. ISBN 1-55704-184-9. Recommended retail price $16.95.

After 1,100 years of isolation, the most remote uninhabited island on the planet, Easter Island - also known as Rapanui - was discovered by Europeans in 1722. Giant stone statues and a handful of Stone Age people were all that remained of a once-flourishing civilization. To this day no one is really sure what happened before the Dutch arrived.

Rapa Nui the movie is not an exact chronicle of what happened on the island. It's a drama of what might have been, set in 1680 with the island on the brink of civil war. Created by Kevin Reynolds, Kevin Costner, Jim Wilson and a superb international team, this powerful action-packed movie was shot entirely on Easter Island.

Rapa Nui: The Easter Island Legend is three books in one: a photo and word essay on Rapanui and its ancient culture, the illustrated abridged screen play of the film; and a fascinating report on adventure film-making in one of the most remote locations on earth. More than 140 illustrations - 76 in full color - include production stills, scenic photos of the island, historic art, and maps. Soft cover, 160 pages. Published in 1994.

Stone buildings	Moai	Crater

Click on links below for these books.

South Pacific Islands, Nelles Guide by Michael Brillat

South Pacific Phrasebook by Hadrien Dhont et al

Tahiti Handbook: Including Easter Island and the Cooks by David Stanley

Last modified on Saturday, May 07, 2005