Will Buckingham travelled to Tanimbar Islands (Indonesia) as a trainee anthropologist to meet three remarkable sculptors.
Will Buckingham travelled to Tanimbar Islands (Indonesia) as a trainee anthropologist to meet three remarkable sculptors: the crippled Matias Fatruan, the buffalo hunter Abraham Amelwatin, and Damianus Masele, who was skilled in black magic, but who abstained out of Christian principle. Part memoir, part travel-writing, Stealing with the Eyes is the story of these men, and also of how stumbling into a world of witchcraft, sickness and fever lead him to question the validity of his anthropological studies, and eventually to abandon them for good. Through his encounters with these remarkable craftsmen and weaving together Tanimbarese history, myth and philosophy of this part of the world from ancient times we are shown the forces at play in all of our lives: the struggle between the powerful and the powerless, the tension between the past and the future, and how to make sense of a world that is in constant flux. --
"A beautifully written evocation of a journey into the village communities of eastern Indonesia, and a remarkable meditation on the uneasy business of travelling to foreign lands in search of stories."
- Tim Hannigan, author of A Brief History of Indonesia
"Buckingham writes compellingly about cultural appropriation and the power imbalances that so often colour anthropological endeavour. . . . Stealing with the Eyes is powerful. Buckingham has a wonderful eye for detail, and the tale he has woven is gripping."
- Times Literary Supplement
"Apart from setting the tone through observation, the best about Buckingham's prose is its apparent honesty. Written more than two decades after working on a project with Ambon's Pattimura University, this memoir squints at self and society from afar."
- The Jakarta Post
