The Last Heathen: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia

Charles Montgomery

2009년 9월 · D & M Publishers

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In 1892, the Bishop of Tasmania set sail for Melanesia with the intent of rescuing islanders from lives of fear, black magic and cannibalism. Over 100 years later, his great grandson, Charles Montgomery, followed the bishop’s route through the South Pacific, seeking out the spirits and 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, witch doctors and gun-toting rebels, only to discover that the pagan spirits were more tenacious than the missionaries had imagined. Melanesians had stirred Jesus and Mary into an already spicy broth of ancestor worship, ghosts, shark gods and magic. Through confrontations with a bizarre cast of characters—the randy ethnographer, the soft-talking assassin, the leper prophet—the journey becomes a debate on the nature of magic, myth and faith, and a metaphor for the transforming power of story.

The Last Heathen marks the debut of an exciting young writer who charts his adventures with passion, insight and grace.

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Charles Montgomery was born in 1968. He spent his formative years on a farm in North Cowichan, Vancouver Island. He has been a writer and photojournalist since 1996. His interest in people, landscape, science and myth have led him to stories on four continents. Charles has followed leads to Nunavut, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Thailand, Laos, Hong Kong, Japan, Peru, Fiji, Colombia, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.

Whether covering conflict in the Andean foothills or exploring sled dog etiquette in the Arctic, Charles has won accolades for his reportage and taut storytelling.

His first book, The Last Heathen: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia, won the 2005 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction. Jurors called it “an irresistible adventure in discovery, a journey into rough terrain and a revelation of the power of ancestral stories across cultural divides." Maclean's Magazine enthused: "Beautifully written and utterly astounding....A study in the transforming power of myth, and the unpredictable consequences of colliding cultures, The Last Heathen is superb." The book has also won the Hubert Evans Prize for Non-fiction and was short-listed for two Writers' Trust of Canada awards.

Charles is also a contributor to Way Out There, Explore Magazine's anthology of the best Canadian adventure writing. Since 2001, he has won four Western Magazine Awards, a National Magazine Award and the 2003 American Society of Travel Writer's Lowell Thomas Silver Award for best North American travel story.

Charles lives in Vancouver, Canada, where he is a member of the FCC, a collective of literary journalists who use stories about the world to shed light on contemporary issues. He has been influenced by the writing of Malcolm Lowry, Laurens van der Post, Bruce Chatwin and Carlos Fuentes.