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The Shark God |
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| ...published in Canada as: The Last Heathen This prize-winning blend of history and memoir journeys to the islands of the South Pacific to explore the bond between faith and magic, the bizarre influence of Western Culture and the eerie persistence of the spirit world. In 1892, the Bishop of Tasmania set sail for an archipelago of coral atolls and bubbling volcanoes in the South Pacific with the intent of rescuing islanders from lives of fear, black magic and cannibalism. More than a century later his great grandson, Charles Montgomery, followed the bishop's route through Melanesia, seeking the spirits and the myths his missionary forebear had sought to destroy. Montgomery explored remote shores where gospel and empire never took hold. He rubbed shoulders with barefoot preachers, sorcerers and gun-toting rebels, only to discover that the pagan spirits were far more tenacious than the missionaries imagined. Melanesians had stirred Jesus and Mary into an already spicy broth of ancestor worship, ghosts, magic, shark gods and anti-colonial messiahs. The Shark God is the account of Montgomery's journey to uncover the legacy of the Victorian missionaries. The story is infused with dashes of anthropology, philosophy and a history thick with Victorian rogues, sorcery, sexual mischief and murder. But it is grounded in wry observations of the contrasts of modern Melanesia. This is a place where villagers pray to the spirit of an American GI for boatloads of refrigerators and Spam, where Christian militants pray to crocodiles to destroy their enemies, and where curses are meted out by wayward monks. We are introduced to a bizarre cast of characters—the shark worshipper, the soft-talking assassin, the leper prophet—and their stories reveal the ambiguous and bizarre consequences of the colonial adventure. Montgomery is inevitably drawn into the very myths he had set out to challenge. The journey becomes a debate on the nature of magic, myth and faith, and a metaphor for the transforming power of story. '"Exquisite writing..." -- Publishers Weekly The Shark God is published in the United States by HarperCollins, and in the United Kingdom by 4th Estate/HarperCollins. The Last Heathen is published in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre. Award winner: *Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction *Hubert Evans Non-fiction Prize |
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