Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    A Plague of Caterpillars: A Return to the African Bush
    Unavailable
    A Plague of Caterpillars: A Return to the African Bush
    Unavailable
    A Plague of Caterpillars: A Return to the African Bush
    Ebook181 pages3 hours

    A Plague of Caterpillars: A Return to the African Bush

    By Nigel Barley

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Nigel Barley returns to Cameroon on hearing that the elaborate and fearsome Dowayo circumcision ceremony, performed at six or seven year intervals, is about to take place. Yet, like much else in this hilarious book by the author of The Innocent Anthropologist, the circumcision ceremony proves frustratingly elusive, partly because of an extraordinary plague of black, hairy caterpillars.

    In the meantime, witchcraft fills the Cameroonian air, a man is lied to by his own foot and an earnest German traveller shows explicit birth-control propaganda to the respectable tribespeople. Beneath the joy and shared laughter in this comic masterpiece lies skilful and wise reflection on the problems facing people of different cultures as they try to understand one another.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEland Publishing
    Release dateNov 30, 2018
    ISBN9781780601540
    Unavailable
    A Plague of Caterpillars: A Return to the African Bush
    Author

    Nigel Barley

    Nigel Barley was born in Kingston-on-Thames in 1947 and studied Modern Languages at Cambridge before completing a doctorate in Social Anthropology at Oxford. Having taught at University College London and the Slade School of Art, he joined the British Museum in 1988 as an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Ethnography and remained there for some twenty years. After publishing several works of academic anthropology, he wrote The Innocent Anthropologist (1983) about his fieldwork amongst a hill people in Cameroon, West Africa. It contradicted so may of the cherished assumptions of the discipline that it led to calls for his expulsion from the professional body of anthropologists. He remained, however, and now the book has been translated into some twenty-five other languages and is often the first work encountered by students of anthropology in their studies. He left the Museum in 2002 and is now a professional writer, living in London but dividing his time between the UK and Indonesia. His most recent work is Island of Demons (Monsoon Books, Singapore), a fictionalised treatment of the life of the painter Walter Spies.

    Read more from Nigel Barley

    Related to A Plague of Caterpillars

    Related ebooks

    Africa Travel For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      On Aging

      Mar 1, 2022

      On Aging
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Price Of Love

      Feb 3, 2022

      The Price Of Love
      6 min read

    • Article

      Insults And Innuendo

      Aug 24, 2021

      Insults And Innuendo
      6 min read

    • Article

      'Sea People' Examines The Origins And History Of Polynesia

      Mar 13, 2019

      Christina Thompson deftly weaves her fascinating narrative of European travels and attempts to understand the Polynesian puzzle in her new book, though European colonization is not fully addressed.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Parasite Lost

      Dec 1, 2021

      Parasite Lost
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Ultimate Guide To England’s Game Of Thrones

      Mar 27, 2020

      The son of warrior king Henry V and Catherine de Valois, Henry VI was crowned king of both England and France during infancy. He would proceed to oversee England’s final losses in the Hundred Years’ War and famously married the strong and powerful Ma

      5 min read

    • Article

      Raising Mank

      Jun 1, 2021

      Raising Mank
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Trip To Venice

      Oct 5, 2021

      A Trip To Venice
      1 min read

    • Article

      ‘Deeper Than A Sexual Betrayal’: What Happens If Your Partner Doesn’t Like Your Writing?

      May 27, 2023

      There are no decapitations or dead girls in Nicole Holofcener’s sublime new horror film. The incident at the center of the writer-director’s latest movie is, to a certain set anyway, far more alarming. Beth, a happily married writer (Julia Louis-Drey

      7 min read

    • Article

      Gwilym The Conqueror

      Jun 9, 2022

      Gwilym The Conqueror
      5 min read

    • Article

      Dealing With The Locals

      Feb 14, 2022

      Dealing With The Locals
      1 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Sep 4, 2020

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Sep 4, 2020

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      Iran

      May 5, 2022

      When I saw the bush, I could hardly contain my delight. It rose from the grainy sweep of sand before me like a towering will-o’-thewisp, part-fern, part-wishful phantasm. Shade pooled from its roots in delicious, wasteful abandon. Could it be real? F

      3 min read

    • Article

      Forgive Us Our Trespasses

      Jun 3, 2021

      Forgive Us Our Trespasses
      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      1. Here there’s no rainy season.Sun scalds my forehead,yet the pool is empty. Beside it,a toppled table, its glass surface shattered.The asphalt is too hot for bare feet. 2. Far away: white hillocksand white dunes under a deepblue sky. Swirling winds

      5 min read

    • Article

      Once BITTEN

      Jun 28, 2022

      Once BITTEN
      14 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Scammers

      Sep 15, 2021

      Scammers
      3 min read

    • Article

      Her Name Is Rio

      May 4, 2021

      Her Name Is Rio
      9 min read

    Reviews for A Plague of Caterpillars

    4/5

    2 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A sequel to The Innocent Anthropologist, and really only for fans of that book. Which everyone should be — it’s hilarious. This sequel is not quite as funny, but still enjoyable & with more detail about the actual anthropological research Barley conducted.