Author Description

In 1927 a young woman was kidnapped by warriors of an Amazonian tribe never before in contact with the outside world. She spent over four years as a prisoner of one of the fiercest and most isolated tribes of the Amazon jungle. After her daring and harrowing escape in 1931 she was interviewed by Peruvian writer Arturo D. Hernandez, himself a native of the Amazon. That interview became the basis of Selva Tragica, which gives a unique insight into the life, thoughts and social structure of that fierce and warlike tribe of cannibals before any contact with the outside world, and chronicles the changes that occurred as the first contacts were made. It is a story that can only be told from the inside because, as the story shows, the very contact with the outside investigators changes the very thing they are investigating. Selva Tragica was first published in Spanish in 1954 and won the Ricardo Palma National Prize as the best novel in Peru that year. A French edition was published in Paris in 1956. This is the novel's first translation into English. Other works of Hernandez include Sangama: A Story of the Amazon Jungle, Bubinzana: The Magic Song of the Amazon, and Tangarana and other Tales."