Under the Mountain Wall A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age New Guinea
Peter MatthiessenPublished1987
Pages320
Formatpaperback
PublisherPenguin
Synopsis
In the Baliem Valley in central New Guinea live a Stone Age tribe which survived into the twentieth century, the Kurelu. Peter Matthiessen joined the Harvard-Peabody Expedition of 1961 which set out to study this primitive people as unobtrusively as possible, living among the Kurelu for two seasons, and produced a classic account, not of the expedition, but of a lost culture in all its violence and simplicity. Drawing on his skills as a naturalist and novelist, Matthiessen observes the Kurelus' timeless rhythms of work and play, of warriorship, feasting and funerals in one of the worlds last and now vanishing wildernesses.
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About Peter Matthiessen
P
Peter Matthiessen
1927–2014
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.
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