Under the Mountain Wall A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age Guinea
In the Baliem Valley in central New Guinea lived a Stone Age tribe which survived into the 20th century - the Kurelu. Matthiessen joined the Harvard-Peabody Expedition of 1961 which set out to study the tribe as unobtrusively as possible, living among the Kurelu for two seasons. The result was this account, not of the expedition but of a lost culture: the Kurelu's timeless rhythms of work and play, or warriorship, feasting and funerals.
HistoryOceaniaTravel
RELEASED2003
PUBLISHERVintage
LENGTH288
LANGUAGEEN
Peter Matthiessen was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer and CIA agent. A co-founder of the literary magazine The Paris Review, he was a 2008 National Book Award winner. He was also a prominent environmental activist. His nonfiction featured nature and travel, notably The Snow Leopard (1978) and American Indian issues and history, such as a detailed and controversial study of the Leonard Peltier case, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983). His fiction was adapted for film: the early story "Travelin' Man" was made into The Young One (1960) by Luis Buñuel and the novel At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965) into the 1991 film of the same name.
Under the Mountain Wall A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age Guinea
In the Baliem Valley in central New Guinea lived a Stone Age tribe which survived into the 20th century - the Kurelu. Matthiessen joined the Harvard-Peabody Expedition of 1961 which set out to study the tribe as unobtrusively as possible, living among the Kurelu for two seasons. The result was this account, not of the expedition but of a lost culture: the Kurelu's timeless rhythms of work and play, or warriorship, feasting and funerals.
HistoryOceaniaTravel
RELEASED2003
PUBLISHERVintage
LENGTH288
LANGUAGEEN
Peter Matthiessen was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer and CIA agent. A co-founder of the literary magazine The Paris Review, he was a 2008 National Book Award winner. He was also a prominent environmental activist. His nonfiction featured nature and travel, notably The Snow Leopard (1978) and American Indian issues and history, such as a detailed and controversial study of the Leonard Peltier case, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983). His fiction was adapted for film: the early story "Travelin' Man" was made into The Young One (1960) by Luis Buñuel and the novel At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965) into the 1991 film of the same name.
