Review 41: A Death in the Rainforest

A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was captivated by this book, and still am. To be honest, before I started reading it I thought it might be a tad boring. Boy was I wrong. This book I could honestly say is non-fiction that reads like fiction.

There was a very small portion early in the book that went over some language nerdy stuff, but it was brief and didn’t drag down the book at all. Kulick stated this book was written for the layperson, not an academic endeavor like his first book. Here he wanted to give to the world an insight on what life is like for the villagers in a small, very remote village, deep in the rainforest in Papua New Guinea. And Kulick wanted to tell the story of why their native language is dying, as it speaks to a larger issue of the world today, and of the past.

The village is Gapun and Tayap is the dying language Kulick studied. The villagers are now speaking Tok Pisin (a form of Pidgin English) instead. Papua New Guinea has more diverse languages than any other country; nearly every village has its own language. And they aren’t variants or dialects either, completely different language, and most spoken by about 500 people or less. It is their way of differing themselves where they came from.

Kulick tells a good story here. He intersperses action with explanations. He strings the reader along, and you don’t mind. There are some moments where you laugh, and some you cringe, and there are moments of disbelief.

Kulick states somewhat near the end of the book that there are no undiscovered tribes left. First contact can never be again, as that is now all in the past. It reminds me of Bill McKibben’s book The End of Nature, which the premise is that all nature has been affected by humans, and this goes as well for “wild” humans as well.

I could keep going, but this review is already getting long. I hope this book will be read, it’s well written, entertaining and informative. And to learn about this dying culture is important. It is the least we can do.


Thanks to Algonquin Books and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.