"Death in the Rainforest: The End of a Language and Way of Life in Papua New Guinea" Author: [Sweden] Don Kulik Translator: Shen Hexi Publisher: Life·Reading·New Knowledge Sanlian Bookstore Douban 2022 Annual History and Culture Book No.7

In the 1990s, young anthropologist Don Kulik went alone to the rainforest of Papua New Guinea, to the small village of Gapuen, with a population of only 200, in the middle of a swamp, to record a local language that was on the verge of extinction - Atayalbo. After arriving, he realized that it was impossible to truly learn the language without understanding the daily lives of the locals who spoke it: you had to understand how they communicated with their children, how they quarreled, gossiped and joked. During this period of time spanning three decades, he visited the local area repeatedly, staying for a few weeks to more than half a year each time, witnessing the linguistic environment becoming increasingly thin, and recording everything he could learn. At the same time, he also found that he had unswervingly integrated into the lives and world of the Gapuen villagers, and had become entangled with their joys and sorrows and fate.

In the year when the English version of this book was published, it was selected as one of the must-read books of the season by Time magazine and the best travel book of the season by National Geographic, and received widespread attention from the media and praise from readers.

Don Kulick was born in California, USA in 1960, and later moved to Sweden. He received his PhD in Anthropology from Stockholm University in 1990, and has taught at Linköping University, Stockholm University, New York University, and the University of Chicago. He is currently a distinguished professor of anthropology at Uppsala University in Sweden and a chair professor at the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. He has written and edited more than a dozen books covering a variety of fields. He has conducted extensive anthropological field research in Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and Scandinavia, and has received many grants and honors, including the American Humanities Foundation Scholar, the Mellon Foundation Visiting Professor, and the Guggenheim Scholar Award.