Description

Book Synopsis

''One of the great books of our century . . . It speaks with a human voice'' Susan Sontag

Tristes Tropiques begins with the line ''I hate travelling and explorers'', yet during his life Claude Lévi-Strauss travelled from wartime France to the Amazon basin and the dense upland jungles of Brazil, where he found ''human society reduced to its most basic expression''. His account of the people he encountered changed the field of anthropology, transforming Western notions of ''primitive'' man. Tristes Tropiques is a major work of art as well as of scholarship. It is a memoir of exquisite beauty and a masterpiece of travel writing: funny, discursive, movingly detailing personal and cultural loss, and brilliantly connecting disparate fields of thought. Few books have had as powerful and broad an impact.



Trade Review
A magical masterpiece -- Robert Ardrey
One of the great books of our century ... It speaks with a human voice -- Susan Sontag

Tristes Tropiques

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    A Paperback / softback by Claude Lévi-Strauss

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      Book details

      Publisher Penguin Random House Group
      Imprint Penguin Classics
      Published 1 September 2011
      ISBN-13 9780141197548
      978-0141197548
      ISBN-10 0141197544
      Also in:
      Politics, Philosophy & Society Anthropology Travel & Transport Classic travel writing Travel writing

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      ''One of the great books of our century . . . It speaks with a human voice'' Susan Sontag

      Tristes Tropiques begins with the line ''I hate travelling and explorers'', yet during his life Claude Lévi-Strauss travelled from wartime France to the Amazon basin and the dense upland jungles of Brazil, where he found ''human society reduced to its most basic expression''. His account of the people he encountered changed the field of anthropology, transforming Western notions of ''primitive'' man. Tristes Tropiques is a major work of art as well as of scholarship. It is a memoir of exquisite beauty and a masterpiece of travel writing: funny, discursive, movingly detailing personal and cultural loss, and brilliantly connecting disparate fields of thought. Few books have had as powerful and broad an impact.



      Trade Review
      A magical masterpiece -- Robert Ardrey
      One of the great books of our century ... It speaks with a human voice -- Susan Sontag

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