Gavan Daws

SHOAL OF TIME was Gavan Daws' first book. It became the ALLTIME BESTSELLING history of Hawaiʻi.

Daws has written fifteen other widely published books, about Hawaiʻi, the Pacific, and Asia--among them "Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific" and "Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai" the biography of a nineteenth-century missionary priest who gave his life in the service of Hawaiian leprosy sufferers and was made a saint in 2009.

For a decade and a half, Daws headed historical research on the Pacific and Southeast Asia in the Australian National University's Institute of Advanced Studies. During that time, he was a member of the UNESCO Commission on the Cultural and Scientific History of Humankind, and he was elected to the Academy of the Humanities in Australia.

Daws' other work includes documentary films that have won awards internationally; a stage play with music and choreography; an opera libretto; and song lyrics.

He and his Hawaiʻi-born wife live in Honolulu.