Islands of Beauty, Love and Cannibals

The mythical islands of the South Pacific have always fired the imaginations of Europeans. Yet only a few ever actually arrived to admire the beauty of the half-naked women, the sunsets over the rustling beaches, and also the carving and tattooing artistry of the Polynesians. One Czech who largely fulfilled this dream (before the onset of globalisation) is the ethnologist Miloslav Stingl, a living legend of travel literature.
“Is there still tenderness in the world? Is there silence, an uninterrupted flow of happiness, is there still a paradise on earth? Paradise on earth. They say there is. That it exists! The ethnographer calls it Polynesia. And the geographer calls it the Islands of the South Seas,” wrote Stingl in the introduction to his hopelessly out-of-print book from 1974.
This updated and annotated account of the beauties and mysteries of Tahiti, Samoa, New Zealand, the Marquesas Islands, and Easter Island brings not only Stingl's classic and brilliant observations, backed by his expert knowledge, but also entirely new passages dedicated to another Polynesian phenomenon: cannibalism. Did you know that the Māori of New Zealand even made clothes pegs and flutes from human bones? That the Marquesans, tattooed from head to toe, literally fell in love with human flesh? And that on the island of Rapa Nui – full of mythical moai statues – there is a cave called Ana Kai Tangata, which means nothing other than the Cave of the Cannibals?
Stingl, now in his eighties, recounts all of this in *Islands of Beauty, Love, and Cannibals*, which will soon be followed by a second part detailing Stingl's travels through Melanesia and also Micronesia.
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Miloslav Stingl (born 19 December 1930 in Bílina) is a renowned Czech traveller, ethnographer, and writer. He has had numerous personal encounters with a variety of indigenous cultures (especially Native American and Pacific ethnic groups) and has documented these experiences in his many books.