Hendrik Neubauer

I don't know who this book was written for. Possibly fans of National Geographic, because of the photographs, or teenagers, because its tone is reminiscent of that in text-books for 15-year-olds. Readers who are curious about other cultures and looking for a very general and undemanding introduction to random aspects of them might like this book as well, although I'm not sure The Survivors would inspire them to read similar books nor give them many leads to follow.

Various groups living around the world and a few relevant topics--shamanism, rites of passage and such--are discussed in a few pages each. The book's chockablock with photos and sidebars (many of the latter nothing more than wildly adulatory descriptions of local musicians) and amongst thoseare something like descriptions of each group. The layout is strange: the captions for the photos are confusing & sometimes missing and there's one map only to which I was forever flipping back as the entry headings weirdly offered only longitude & latitude for location.

The text itself annoyed me quite a lot. For one thing, there was a scatter-shot approach that rendered the book surprisingly uninformative. Apparently, for example, the most significant thing about the Sami people is their tourist trade: Santa, sleighs, reindeer, and northern lights. (Their Northern Lights Expedition takes you to, I dunno, the northern lights on skiddos and 'when the mechanical monsters finally halt, the unique experience of wandering out into the vastness of the polar night begins. In the glistening light, the wind whistles by like the soft stroke of tissue paper against the skin.') Heirs to a rich cultural heritage, those Sami, and inspiration for execrable prose as well.

That parenthetical quotation flaunts as it were another annoyance. If you can endure such writing and would be gripped by the beginning of the Hmong entry ('They are very enterprising, the women of the Hmong Njua . . . the Hmong women are already standing in pose at the invitingly open doors of their straw-thatched huts. The children run around smiling. . . Click click click--only the digital cameras no longer make a sound. A perfect idyliic scene?') by all means go for it. Me, I'm very glad I paid only a few quid for the book and I'd be gladder still if I'd not bought it at all because it's going to make the box I'm taking to the 2nd-hand bookshop tomorrow a fair bit heavier.… (mais)