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

268 Pages·2018·10.69 MB·English

by  Carl Hoffman

Map

Dedication
For Max
Epigraph
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
—ROBERT FROST
Contents
Cover
Map
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Author’s Note
Prologue: A Ghost Story
Part I: Rupture
One
Two
Three
Four
Part II: Immersion
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Part III: Return
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Acknowledgments
Select Bibliography
Notes
Index
About the Author
Also by Carl Hoffman
Copyright
About the Publisher
Author’s Note
This is a work of nonfiction reconstructed through thousands of pages of
original, contemporaneous journals, letters, news articles, films, still
photographs; hours of in-person interviews in Indonesia, Malaysia, Switzerland,
France, Austria, and Canada; telephone interviews; and two monthlong trips to
Malaysian Sarawak and Indonesian Kalimantan, where I walked in many of the
very same footsteps traveled by the characters in this story. There are a few tales
here, however, that feel so wild they defy belief, with no corroborating witnesses
or documents. I think they’re true, but only the tellers know for sure.