The World's Literature in Europe discussion

I have a personal connection to New Guinea (both sides.) As a child, I read missionary memoirs on my parents' shelves, and I took a world music class as an undergrad that changed my career path. At one point I was pondering the missionary side of ethnomusicology, and one of Wycliffe's favorite places to go is PNG because of the numerous languages represented. I did not go that path but sometimes reading books set there feels like my alternate history or something. So I went poking around for more books in New Guinea to read, and thought I'd share them with you!

Fiction:
The White Mary by Kira Salak (same author as Four Corners, in her first fiction attempt)
Euphoria by Lily King

Memoir and Biography:
Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman
Michael Rockefeller: New Guinea Photographs, 1961
The New Guinea Memoirs Of Jean Baptiste Octave Mouton
Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zukoff

Missionary memoirs (separating these out because they usually include a hefty dosage of religious message, and of course tend to be pretty dismissive of native culture as they are there to SAVE people, so fair warning):
Peace Child: An Unforgettable Story of Primitive Jungle Treachery in the 20th Century by Don Richardson
Into the Heart of Papua New Guinea by Kay Liddle
Deeper into the Heart of Papua New Guinea by Kay Liddle
Mission Possible: The Story of a Wycliffe Missionary by Marilyn Laszlo
Selfless: The Story of Sr. Theophane's Missionary Life in the Jungles of Papua New Guinea by Reida Immolata

Other non-fiction:
Where the Spirits Dwell: An Odyssey in the Jungle of New Guinea by Tobias Schneebaum (sounds a lot like Four Corners)
Gardens of War: Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age
Under the Mountain Wall by Peter Matthiessen (I understand this can be read in conjunction with Gardens of War)
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond - this book focuses on the Dani people, one of the groups targeted by the Indonesian government for genocide according to Kira Salak
From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea by Paige West
Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee by Dean Cycon

NOT recommended:
There is one book that has all negative reviews, but tends to pop up a lot alongside these other books. It sounds like these two journalists wrote a very erroneous account of a people group based on a two-week trip into the jungle. (For one thing, they aren't lost!) The Lost Tribe: A Harrowing Passage into New Guinea's Heart of Darkness

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "I have a personal connection to New Guinea (both sides.) As a child, I read missionary memoirs on my parents' shelves, and I took a world music class as an undergrad..."

Exploration of Papua New Guinea (pp 918-19) is recorded as beginning in the sixteenth century. Of some early explorers of New Guinea, whose books are antiquarian in today's book market, Kira Salak describes in chapter six of Four Corners. In particular, the late nineteenth century, Luigi Maria d'Albertis published New Guinea: What I did and what I saw , and in the 1920s, Salak's mentor Ivan Francis Champion explored the region, his explorations written about in Across New Guinea from the Fly to the Sepik.

In case you're interested, I finished From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea by Paige West. My review is here. I feel like quite the expert on PNG coffee!

Up next: cannibals.

Like your review about changes in Papua New Guinea coffee production, Jenny. My next PNG book is Papua New Guinea Prints, one-hundred-eighty images and descriptions of dancing spirits, masks, fauna, humans, helicopters, and perhaps shrunken heads.

Now I want to read both the coffee and print books. This group is keeping my TBR list ever expanding!

Asma wrote: "Like your review about changes in Papua New Guinea coffee production, Jenny. My next PNG book is Papua New Guinea Prints, one-hundred-eighty images and descriptions of dancing spiri..."
Woohoo shrunken heads! I have a whole stack of these books from the library so I think I'll just stick around New Guinea this month.

Oh goodness, I just finished Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman, and it was a fascinating read. Well-researched, well-documented. My review is here.

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "...I think I'll just stick around New Guinea this month.
..."

I'm finding both Papua New Guinea and that entire surrounding area good reading because of the specific culture. This year will be a great opportunity to discover more about this region of our shared world.

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "... I just finished Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman, and it was a fascinating read..."

A strange ending for M.R., something awful and uncommon like being suddenly falling through a sinkhole.

It's me again, reading more New Guinea. I just can't get enough!

This time is a more recent memoir, Secret Places: My Life In New York & New Guinea by Tobias Schneebaum. My review contains some qualms about ethics in anthropology but the book does give a more inside view of the culture of the Asmat, the same people Michael Rockefeller had traded with but much more recent.

I also read Euphoria by Lily King, a novel based on the life of Margaret Mead in Papua New Guinea in her 1920s. I have the actual book Mead wrote from those days to read up next. My review of the novel, which I'd highly recommend, is here.

I was planning to move on from New Guinea in March but I'm not sure I'll be ready yet!!!

I appreciate the author of Secret Places for bringing together two incompatible places: New York and New Guinea. Apparently, the author's also raised the reader's eyebrow with his unseemly ethics with the tribespeople that you called attention to in your review.

There's such a long waiting period for Euphoria, now I'm looking forward to reading the book more than ever.

:) After correctly reading your posted comment, I was called away for an hour or so. On returning to it and reorienting my thoughts, but not enough I guess, I briefly thought with considerable surprise you considered moving to New Guinea :) Funny.

Asma wrote: "I appreciate the author of Secret Places for bringing together two incompatible places: New York and New Guinea. Apparently, the author's also raised the reader's eyebrow with his unseemly ethics w..."

Ha, I think part of my fascination with PNG is an ability to see myself thriving there at all!

FWIW - not a book, and truth be told not even that great a surf movie, but Isolated (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih2ze... ) newly added on Netflix has beau coup beautiful PNG footage.

Don wrote: "FWIW - not a book, and truth be told not even that great a surf movie, but Isolated (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih2ze... ) newly added on Netflix has beau coup beautiful PNG footage."

OH thanks Don. Not an easy country to find films from, so it's better than nothing!

Don wrote: "FWIW... Isolated (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih2ze... ) newly added on Netflix has beau coup beautiful PNG footage."

Hi, Don. Thanks for suggested film on PNG. Mea culpa, I'm still working on the previous two films, "Mystery Road" and "Uncle Boonmee".

Finishing up my two months in New Guinea with Growing Up in New Guinea by Margaret Mead. My review, which reflects on the early days of anthropology and Margaret Mead's bias, is here.

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Finishing up my two months in New Guinea with Growing Up in New Guinea by Margaret Mead..."

Jenny, enjoyed your reviews on this work and on other ones about New Guinea. l learned more than I knew about that place and its history from reading your book reviews about it.

Hi I'm back! I read another New Guinea book. I know I said I was moving on but I haven't yet. It is a book I had in my original list and had downloaded in iBooks when it was on sale - Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II. It hasn't been my best read but I feel like it was more geared toward military history buffs. I can see some people really enjoying it. Basically it is the story of a WWII plane that crashed in the Baliem valley and only three people survived. The journalist writing the book did excellent and thorough research (although I think he could have stood a bit more on the anthropological side). My review is here.

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "...New Guinea...Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II...."

Lost Horizon by James Hilton was my first experience with Shangri-La (Tibet) and was maybe the harbinger of intriguing accounts of further Shangri-Las.

Asma Fedosia wrote: "Lost Horizon by James Hilton was my first experience with Shangri-La (Tibet) and was maybe the harbinger of intriguing accounts of further Shangri-Las. ..."

I got the impression the ww2 people had that book/movie in their heads.

I loved "Lost Horizon" during my teen years.

Photographs from a present-day sing-sing among tribes of PNG:

http://www.roughguides.com/article/21...