Shelf life: Looking at secular books

DON’T SLEEP, THERE ARE SNAKES
By Daniel Everett
Profile Books. 284 pages. £15.00
ISBN 978-1-84668-030-4

Daniel Everett travelled to the banks of an Amazon tributary as an SIL (Wycliffe Bible Translators) missionary in 1977. 30 years later he is still studying their language, but not as a Bible translator, instead he is an academic researcher. Everett’s time with the Piraha tribe has led to a revolution in linguistics and a personal revolution in his own life — he lost his faith and with it his family.

This book is in three parts. The first documents the episodes of his life living at close quarters with the Pirahas. He describes his wife’s and daughter’s life-threatening malaria in their first stay in Brazil, and how he had to transport them, slipping in and out of consciousness, with his other two young children for three days to reach even basic medical support. There are other dramatic stories, too; the family took in an abandoned baby orphan, nursed and cared for her, but as the tiny girl was regaining strength she was murdered by the other villagers, who viewed her as fated. Alongside this shock we find descriptions of the beautiful riverside, hunting trips and the predators around. I found reading these accounts rather peculiar, because much of the content is similar to missionary autobiographies but the tone is so different. Everett writes without an explanation of his feelings or motivation; he seems to be distancing himself from the work he was sent to do.