The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far Pacific with a Courageous Tribe and a Vanishing Way of Life

Author: Clark, Doug Bock

Edition: Reprint

Number Of Pages: 368

Details:

In this "immersive, densely reported, and altogether remarkable first book [with] the texture and color of a first-rate novel" (New York Times), journalist Doug Bock Clark tells the epic story of the world's last subsistence whalers and the threats posed to a tribe on the brink. A New York Times Notable Book​A New York Times Editors' ChoiceWinner of Lowell Thomas Travel Book Award Silver MedalFinalist for William Saroyan International Writing PrizeLonglisted for Mountbatten Award for Best Book Telegraph Best Travel Books of the YearHampshire Gazette Best Books of 2019One of the favorite books of Yuval Noah Harari, author of the classic bestseller Sapiens, "on the subject of humanity's place in the world." (via Airmail) On a volcanic island in the Savu Sea so remote that other Indonesians call it "The Land Left Behind" live the Lamalerans: a tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who are the world's last subsistence whalers. They have survived for half a millennium by hunting whales with bamboo harpoons and handmade wooden boats powered by sails of woven palm fronds. But now, under assault from the rapacious forces of the modern era and a global economy, their way of life teeters on the brink of collapse. Award-winning journalist Doug Bock Clark, one of a handful of Westerners who speak the Lamaleran language, lived with the tribe across three years, and he brings their world and their people to vivid life in this gripping story of a vanishing culture. Jon, an orphaned apprentice whaler, toils to earn his harpoon and provide for his ailing grandparents, while Ika, his indomitable younger sister, is eager to forge a life unconstrained by tradition, and to realize a star-crossed love. Frans, an aging shaman, tries to unite the tribe in order to undo a deadly curse. And Ignatius, a legendary harpooner entering retirement, labors to hand down the Ways of the Ancestors to his son, Ben, who would secretly rather become a DJ in the distant tourist mecca of Bali. Deeply empathetic and richly reported, The Last Whalers is a riveting, powerful chronicle of the collision between one of the planet's dwindling indigenous peoples and the irresistible enticements and upheavals of a rapidly transforming world.

Reviews:

" A vital, immersive, and elegant debut...With glittering prose and a novelist's knack for storytelling, Clark carries readers to the heart of this community...Reminiscent of Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Clark's book intimately details, with empathy and grace, the tribe's value system and the physical world on which they depend...We often think of indigenous groups as living in remote locations, on the edges of the modern world, but Clark reverses this proposition, using the stories of these whalers to help us understand just what it looks like when the earth reaches carrying capacity and how humans might in turn respond."

― Elizabeth Rush, New York Times Book Review

"An immersive, densely reported, and altogether remarkable first book...The story has the texture and coloring of a first-rate novel...Clark's writing is supple but unshowy...He closely tracks the lives of many Lamalerans, male and female, young and old, and he weaves their stories together with a history of the tribe and its beliefs. He manages to make this tribe's dilemmas universal -- no small feat...Clark brings empathy and literary skill to bear. This is a humbly told book, one in which the author's first-person voice does not intrude. This humility gives the book an organic and resonant propulsion. Accumulated tensions are only slowly released. Scenes are delivered, not summaries. This book earns its emotions...You finish The Last Whalers with hope for the Lamalerans, and hope that Clark writes many more books."

― Dwight Garner, New York Times

" An immersive and absorbing chronicle that takes the reader deep into the lives of this tribe and is told with a richness of interior detail that renders th...

EAN: 9780316390613

Release Date: 22-10-2019

Languages: English

Item Note: Great shape- pages are unmarked and sharp.Has a remainder mark. Paperback Used - Like New Ships fast! 2019Reprint

Item Condition: UsedLikeNew

Binding: Paperback