Customer Reviews

Hans Staden's True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil

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An extraordinarily detailed account of Hans Staden's captivity by Brazilian cannibals in the early 16th century, complete with reproductions of woodcuts that accompanied the original publication. This edition features a lengthy, informative, and intriguing introduction by Neil L. Whitehead, who places European accounts of cannibal cultures during early exploration of the New World at the forefront of modernist ethnography. He brilliantly exposes ways in which these early ethnographies constructed and highlighted Otherness in the newly discovered American cultures.

This is a great account of a culture that seems so foreign to the modern world. Just the fact that this account ever made it to be published hundreds of years was quite miraculous. I enjoyed the story and the carvings.
The introduction was quite interesting and gave a lot of useful context to the story. However, I lost interest as it wore on (its over a third of the book). Maybe I'm not academic enough.