The Paper Nautilus

Overview

The Paper Nautilus is about loss–the forms it takes, how we go on living in the face of it, and the mysterious ways that new life and beginnings are born of brokenness. The paper nautilus provides a vivid image of this interplay of death and rebirth since, for new life to begin, the beautiful but fragile shell that sustained a former life must be shattered. Michael Jackson has recourse to his ethnographic fieldwork among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone, as well as autobiography and fiction, in exploring his theme. Beginning as a series of essays, it gradually morphs into a mesmerizing work of the imagination in which the boundary between author and other becomes blurred, and the line between fact and fiction is erased.

Author Biography

US-resident and New Zealand writer Michael Jackson is the author of 35 works of anthropology, poetry, fiction and memoir, and is internationally renowned for his work in existential anthropology.