One of The New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2019
* Winner of Lowell Thomas Travel Book Award Silver Medal * Finalist for William Saroyan International Writing Prize * Longlisted for Mountbatten Best Book Award * Telegraph Best Travel Books of the Year * Hampshire Gazette Best Books of 2019 * Twice a New York Times Editors Choice * Indie Next Pick * BookMarks Best Reviewed Books Pick * Atlantic Summer Reading Guide pick: "A wondrous, thrilling story." * One of the favorite books of Yuval Noah Harari, author of the classic bestseller Sapiens, "on the subject of humanity's place in the world."
"An immersive, densely reported, and altogether remarkable first book... The story has the texture and coloring of a first-rate novel... [a] feat of journalism... You finish The Last Whalers with hope for the Lamalerans, and hope that Clark writes many more books." ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"A vital, immersive and elegant debut. With glittering prose and a novelist’s knack for storytelling, Clark carries readers to the heart of this community as they try to manage and adapt to the tidal wave of change."―The New York Times Book Review
"In the book, Clark recounts the lives of the Lamalerans with a deep respect, while also spinning a wondrous, thrilling story out of their struggles to balance their traditions with all that entices them to step outside their communal way of life."―The Atlantic
"An immersive and absorbing chronicle that takes the reader deep into the lives of this tribe and is told with a richness of interior detail that renders their lives, and the choices they face, not just comprehensible but somehow familiar..."―Gabriel Thompson, San Francisco Chronicle
"A forceful debut... Clark's prose soars... His finely wrought, deeply reported, and highly empathetic account is a human-level testament to dignity in the face of loss and a stoic adherence to cultural inheritance in the face of a rapidly changing world."―Tim Sohn, Outside Magazine
“I absolutely loved this magnificent book." —Sebastian Junger, New York Times bestselling author of Tribe and The Perfect Storm
"The Last Whalers is an extraordinary feat of reportage and illumination." ―Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams
"The Last Whalers is a monumental achievement." ―Mitchell Zuckoff, New York Times bestselling author of 13 Hours
“A true work of art. Lyrically written... richly observed... heartrending.”—Michael Finkel, New York Times bestselling author of The Stranger in the Woods
"This is an important book." ―Anna Badkhen, author of Walking with Abel: Journeys with the Nomads of the African Savannah
"From the very first lines, I was riveted." ― Robert Moor, author of New York Times bestseller On Trails
"The Last Whalers is an intimate and moving account of cultural extinction told on a profoundly human scale.” ―Francisco Cantu, author of New York Times bestseller and #1 Indie Next pick The Line Becomes a River
"[A] remarkable, gorgeously written account of tribal honor, love, and sacrifice among hunter-gatherers." ―Bronwen Dickey, New York Times bestselling author of Pit Bull
"This is a brilliant, exciting, and terrifying story." ―Jack Hitt, author of Off the Road
The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far Pacific with an ancient tribe and a vanishing way of life
The epic story of the world's last subsistence whalers and the threats posed to the way of life that has sustained them for five centuries
At a time when global change has eradicated thousands of unique cultures, The Last Whalers tells the stunning inside story of the Lamalerans, an ancient tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who live on a remote volcanic island known by other Indonesians as “The Land Left Behind.” They have survived for centuries by taking whales with bamboo harpoons, but now are being pushed toward collapse by the encroachment of the outside world.
Award-winning journalist Doug Bock Clark, who lived with the Lamalerans across three years, weaves together their stories with novelistic flair to usher us inside this hidden drama. Jon, a fatherless apprentice whaler, strives to earn his harpoon and feed his ailing grandparents. Ika, Jon’s indomitable younger sister, struggles to forge a modern life in a tradition-bound culture and realize a star-crossed love. Ignatius, a legendary harpooner entering retirement, labors to hand down the Ways of the Ancestors to his son, Ben, who would rather become a DJ in the distant tourist mecca of Bali.
With brilliant, breathtaking prose and empathetic, fast-paced storytelling, Clark details how the fragile dreams of one of the world’s dwindling indigenous peoples are colliding with the irresistible upheavals of our rapidly transforming world, and delivers to us a group of families we will never forget.
At a time when global change has eradicated thousands of unique cultures, The Last Whalers tells the stunning inside story of the Lamalerans, an ancient tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who live on a remote volcanic island known by other Indonesians as “The Land Left Behind.” They have survived for centuries by taking whales with bamboo harpoons, but now are being pushed toward collapse by the encroachment of the outside world.
Award-winning journalist Doug Bock Clark, who lived with the Lamalerans across three years, weaves together their stories with novelistic flair to usher us inside this hidden drama. Jon, a fatherless apprentice whaler, strives to earn his harpoon and feed his ailing grandparents. Ika, Jon’s indomitable younger sister, struggles to forge a modern life in a tradition-bound culture and realize a star-crossed love. Ignatius, a legendary harpooner entering retirement, labors to hand down the Ways of the Ancestors to his son, Ben, who would rather become a DJ in the distant tourist mecca of Bali.
With brilliant, breathtaking prose and empathetic, fast-paced storytelling, Clark details how the fragile dreams of one of the world’s dwindling indigenous peoples are colliding with the irresistible upheavals of our rapidly transforming world, and delivers to us a group of families we will never forget.
Doug Bock Clark's first book, The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far Pacific with a Courageous Tribe and a Vanishing Way of Life, chronicles life in an indigenous tribe that hunts sperm whales with bamboo harpoons. It was a New York Times's 100 Notable Book for 2019, won the 2019 Lowell Thomas Travel Book Award Silver Medal, and was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize. The New York Times twice selected it as an Editor's Choice and praised it as "an immersive, densely reported, and altogether remarkable first book." The Telegraph also selected it as one of the best travel books of 2019. It is available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, and wherever books are sold. Editions have been published or are forthcoming in England, Japan, Korea, France, Spain, China, and Commonwealth nations.
Also, check out Against the Leviathan: Photos, a gallery of pictures from my time with the Lamalerans.
Extended Quotes
"An immersive, densely reported, and altogether remarkable first book...The story has the texture and coloring of a first-rate novel...Clark's writing is supple but unshowy...He closely tracks the lives of many Lamalerans, male and female, young and old, and he weaves their stories together with a history of the tribe and its beliefs. He manages to make this tribe's dilemmas universal -- no small feat...Clark brings empathy and literary skill to bear. This is a humbly told book, one in which the author's first-person voice does not intrude. This humility gives the book an organic and resonant propulsion. Accumulated tensions are only slowly released. Scenes are delivered, not summaries. This book earns its emotions...You finish The Last Whalers with hope for the Lamalerans, and hope that Clark writes many more books."―Dwight Garner, New York Times
"A vital, immersive, and elegant debut. With glittering prose and a novelist’s knack for storytelling, Clark carries readers to the heart of this community as they try to manage and adapt to the tidal wave of change."―The New York Times Book Review
"An immersive and absorbing chronicle that takes the reader deep into the lives of this tribe and is told with a richness of interior detail that renders their lives, and the choices they face, not just comprehensible but somehow familiar...Clark's writing about the ocean and its creatures is superb, so vivid that the reader can feel the sting of salt water up the nose...The magic in this work is Clark's decision to cede the story over to the Lamalerans themselves. In doing so, he captures the drama of the tribe as it attempts to navigate new opportunities that, while enticing, may bring about the extinction of their culture...Whether that culture will, in the end, withstand mounting pressures from the outside remains to be seen. If it doesn't, The Last Whalers will at least document all that has been lost."―Gabriel Thompson, San Francisco Chronicle
"A forceful debut...Clark's prose soars...Furthermore, his sympathy for and devotion to his subjects is real: he speaks both Indonesian and Lamaleran and fosters an intimacy that allows him to disappear entirely in the telling of their story. He brings us into his characters' lives, showing us the rhythms of Lamalera and the day-to-day tensions the villagers face...Clark successfully depicts these people in their full human complexity rather than as primitive tropes...His finely wrought, deeply reported, and highly empathetic account is a human-level testament to dignity in the face of loss and a stoic adherence to cultural inheritance in the face of a rapidly changing world."―Tim Sohn, Outside Magazine
“I absolutely loved this magnificent book. Part journalism, part anthropology, The Last Whalers is a spectacular and deeply empathetic attempt to understand a vanishing world. Doug Bock Clark has delivered us an amazing account of an almost mythological fight—man versus leviathan—and in vivid prose he reveals the most profound truths about both how strong we are and how fragile we are.”
—Sebastian Junger, New York Times bestselling author of Tribe and The Perfect Storm
"The Last Whalers is an extraordinary feat of reportage and illumination. It introduces a remote community and an endangered way of life, but it refuses to pander to familiar tropes of the exotic, instead bringing its subjects to the page in all their glorious complexity--in all their longing, triumphs, frustrations, and joys. Its gaze is global and intimate at once, tirelessly attuned to the tidal forces and subtle eddies of what it means to be alive."
―Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams
"The Last Whalers is a monumental achievement. With luminous writing and expert reporting, Doug Bock Clark provides a rare view into our shared human past, from exhilarating whale hunts to intimate family dramas. In doing so, he reveals the complex lives of men and women whose ancient culture teeters between the eternal teachings of the Ancestors and the pressures and enticements of modernity."
―Mitchell Zuckoff, New York Times bestselling author of 13 Hours and Lost in Shangri-La
“A true work of art. This lyrically written and richly observed book not only tells of the Lamalerans’ spectacular feats of seamanship, but also demonstrates, with heartrending power, what all of us will lose when the march of modernity touches humanity’s final tradition-ruled outposts.”—Michael Finkel, New York Times bestselling author of The Stranger in the Woods
"This is an important book. The Last Whalers pays a muscular and compassionate witness to our odyssey of being human at the time of the Anthropocene. It is an investigation into our complexities, our desires and boundaries and contradictions--what the book's heroes, the Lamalerans, aptly call 'a typhoon of life.'"
―Anna Badkhen, author of Walking with Abel: Journeys with the Nomads of the African Savannah
"Equal parts rollicking adventure and careful anthropology, The Last Whalers opened up a fresh and fascinating world to me. From the very first lines, I was riveted."
―Robert Moor, author of New York Times bestseller On Trails
"The Last Whalers is an intimate and moving account of cultural extinction told on a profoundly human scale, an urgent and affecting plea for understanding and preserving our myriad identities and traditions before they become forever lost on the relentless road toward a monocultural world.”
―Francisco Cantu, author of New York Times bestseller and #1 Indie Next pick The Line Becomes a River
"Doug Bock Clark's remarkable, gorgeously written account of tribal honor, love, and sacrifice among hunter-gatherers reminds us in this age of breakneck development that the disappearance of indigenous societies diminishes us all."
―Bronwen Dickey, New York Times bestselling author of Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon
"This is a brilliant, exciting, and terrifying story that reveals the hidden world of Indonesian islanders who find themselves trapped between past and future--between hunting whales with bamboo spears to survive and an outside world poised to wipe them out."
―Jack Hitt, author of Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route into Spain and contributing editor to the New York Times Magazine and Harper's
"Consider the experience of sitting in a darkened theater to watch a show, where the artistry on stage cooks up a bit of sorcery for all to witness and enjoy. It’s a way to peek in on unfamiliar worlds, and yet share the human condition. Such is the tale spun by Doug Bock Clark, who has so captured an indigenous tribe of subsistence waterfolk in a narrative nonfiction account of life in Lamalera."―Orion Magazine
"An eye-opening, lyrical account of [Clark’s] immersive visits over many years to a remote Indonesian island."―The Delaware Gazette
"[Clark] brings their world and their people to vivid life in this gripping story of a vanishing culture."―Waco Herald-Tribune
"[A] remarkable first book."―The Telegraph (UK)
"[Clark’s] close observations of the daily life, rituals and personal relationships of these men and women make for both an absorbing picture of a very different culture and a number of well-drawn individual portraits."―Hampshire Gazette, Best Books of 2019