The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure

Travel writer Hoffman (Savage Harvest) uses his own travels to the Pacific island of Borneo to frame biographies of Swiss environmentalist Bruno Manser and American art dealer Michael Palmieri, two Westerners whose activities on the remote island significantly affected the land and its people. Though Manser and Palmieri never actually met, they both found their calling in Borneo in the 1970s and 1980s. Palmieri, “a buccaneer” drawn to the island by wanderlust, became a distinguished collector and dealer of tribal art, collecting ancient pieces such as a Dayak carving of a powerful guardian spirit. Manser, meanwhile, was “a do-gooder” drawn to the self-sustenance and communal elements of the island. He spent over a decade living with the Penan tribe in Sarawak, and became an activist in cultural preservation, fighting against the destruction of the Penan land by logging conglomerates. Hoffman, who followed the footsteps of both men, interweaves cliff-hanging scenes, such as Manser suffering a pit viper bite and Palmieri smuggling artifacts, with a history of colonialism of the island. The result is a deeply informative anthropological study disguised as an adventure tale. (Mar.)