Invented Eden

The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday

By Robin Hemley

2003

First Published

3.38

Average Rating

346

Number of Pages

10H33M

Audio Length

In 1971 Manual Elizalde, a Philippine government minister with a dubious background, discovered a band of twenty-six “Stone Age” rain-forest dwellers living in total isolation. The tribe was soon featured in American newscasts and graced the cover of National Geographic . But after a series of aborted anthropological ventures, the Tasaday Reserve established by Ferdinand Marcos was closed to visitors, and the tribe vanished from public view. Twelve years later, a Swiss reporter hiked into the area and discovered that the Tasaday were actually farmers whom Elizalde had coerced into dressing in leaves and posing with stone tools. The “anthropological find of the century” had become the “ethnographic hoax of the century.” Or maybe not. Robin Hemley tells a story that is more complex than either the hoax proponents or the authenticity advocates might care to admit. It is a gripping and ultimately tragic tale of innocence found, lost, and found again. The author provides an afterword for this Bison Books edition.

Avg Rating

3.38

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

25%

4 STARS

33%

3 STARS

18%

2 STARS

1 STARS

20%

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Author

Robin Hemley

Author · 13 books

Robin Hemley has published seven books of nonfiction and fiction. His latest book, Invented Eden, The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday deals with a purported anthropological hoax in the Philippines. James Hamilton Paterson, writing in the London Review of Books, call Invented Eden, "brave and wholly convincing." John Leonard writes in Harpers, "Besides a terrific story, Invented Eden is a savvy caution." Invented Eden was an American Library Association's Editor's Choice book for 2003. Robin Hemley co-edited the anthology Extreme Fiction:Fabulists and formalists with Michael Martone, and is the author of the memoir, Nola: A Memoir Of Faith, Art And Madness, which won an Independent Press Book Award for Nonfiction. His popular craft book Turning Life Into Fiction, which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection as well as a Quality Paperback Book Club Selection has sold over 40,000 copies and will soon be reissued by Graywolf Press. He is also the author of the novel, The Last Studebaker and the story collections, The Big Ear and All You Can Eat. His awards for his fiction include, The Nelson Algren Award from The Chicago Tribune, The George Garrett Award for Fiction from Willow Springs, the Hugh J. Luke Award from Prairie Schooner, two Pushcart Prizes, and many others. He has published his work in many of the best literary magazines in the country, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Willow Springs, Boulevard, Witness, ACM, North American Review, and many others. His fiction has been widely anthologized, translated, and heard on NPR's "Selected Shorts" and others. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and has taught at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Western Washington Univeristy, St. Lawrence University, Vermont College, and the University of Utah, and in many Summer writing conferences. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Bellingham Review for five years.