Lost White Tribes: Journeys Among the Forgotten

Description

Over three hundred years ago the first European colonisalists set foot in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean to found permanent outposts of the great empires. This epic migration continued until after World War II when these tropical outposts became independant black nations, and the white colonials were forced, or chose, to return home.Some of these colonial descendants, however, had become outcasts in the poorest stratas of the society of which they were now a part. Ignored by both the former slaves and the modern privileged white immigrants, and unable to afford the long journey home, they still hold out today, hiding in remote valleys and hills, 'lost white tribes' living in poverty with the proud myth of their colonial ancestors. Forced to marry within the tribe to retain their fair-skinned purity they are torn between the memory of past privileges and the present need to integrate into the surrounding society.

Riccardo Orizio is the author of Lost White Tribes, which was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.

"Like Chatwin, Orizio has a knack of following hunches and finding good people to talk to. He also does his research and provides a history, as well as a social anthropology, of those he visits...sensitively observed, vividly told and irresistibly exotic." -"Sunday Times"