Daren
A quirky book, a digital copy of which I was provided by the publisher in exchange for a review.
It is subtitled "The Story of the Fake Writings of George Psalmanazar, One of the Greatest Charlatans in Literary History With the Full Text of his Book “A Description Of Formosa” and Extra Writings on his Alleged Travels and his Spurious Responses to Skeptical Objections", which goes a long way to explaining that it is about!
This is a book in several parts - Part 1 is the authors explanation of how the story unfolded, the very short version of which is that a man arrived in England 1704, calling himself George Psalmanazar, claiming to be the first man from Formosa (Taiwan as we now know it) to visit Europe. He made various outlandish claims on life and society in Formosa, publishing a book in that same year setting out all the details of life.
That book is reproduced in full in Part 2. Part 3 is account he wrote of his journey in Europe. Part 4 is a Preface to the second edition of his book, in which he responds to the challenges of his many critics.
It is an interesting story of fraud by a French-born man who we know little about.
His lengthy description of Formosa covers in depth all aspects of life in he same way a social anthropologist would set about describing a society - societal structure, religion, marriage / customs / beliefs, economy, industry and farming, clothing, music, buildings, language, money, the intervention of foreign peoples.
Some is plainly ridiculous, such as the sacrifice of 18,000 boys per year for their religion. But one cant say he didn't boldly defend his position and attempt to argue his way forward.
I lost interest part way through most sections, but there was just enough there to have made it an interesting story. I read it small amounts at a time, so it didn't really allow me to pull the whole thing together cohesively, which is perhaps my own issue, not the authors.
3 stars.
A quirky book, a digital copy of which I was provided by the publisher in exchange for a review.
It is subtitled "The Story of the Fake Writings of George Psalmanazar, One of the Greatest Charlatans in Literary History With the Full Text of his Book “A Description Of Formosa” and Extra Writings on his Alleged Travels and his Spurious Responses to Skeptical Objections", which goes a long way to explaining that it is about!
This is a book in several parts - Part 1 is the authors explanation of how the story unfolded, the very short version of which is that a man arrived in England 1704, calling himself George Psalmanazar, claiming to be the first man from Formosa (Taiwan as we now know it) to visit Europe. He made various outlandish claims on life and society in Formosa, publishing a book in that same year setting out all the details of life.
That book is reproduced in full in Part 2. Part 3 is account he wrote of his journey in Europe. Part 4 is a Preface to the second edition of his book, in which he responds to the challenges of his many critics.
It is an interesting story of fraud by a French-born man who we know little about.
His lengthy description of Formosa covers in depth all aspects of life in he same way a social anthropologist would set about describing a society - societal structure, religion, marriage / customs / beliefs, economy, industry and farming, clothing, music, buildings, language, money, the intervention of foreign peoples.
Some is plainly ridiculous, such as the sacrifice of 18,000 boys per year for their religion. But one cant say he didn't boldly defend his position and attempt to argue his way forward.
I lost interest part way through most sections, but there was just enough there to have made it an interesting story. I read it small amounts at a time, so it didn't really allow me to pull the whole thing together cohesively, which is perhaps my own issue, not the authors.
3 stars.