Ultra. Why the Night Is Black

A book of true stories told by the ‘last’ prominent cannibal Papuan tribal chiefs and the authentic record of communication during the symbolic ‘Final First Contact’.
For thousands of years, stories like these have been part of the tribes’ oral tradition, passed down from generation to generation. This book /richly supplemented with black and white photographs/ is the first ever transcription of authentic recorded interviews, conducted with the final indigenous tribespeople before their primeval culture is forever changed by globalisation. The first-person accounts describe the tribesmen’s true stories, at least from their point of view: for them, there is no distinction between the natural and the supernatural – everything is equally real.
Until now, ‘first contacts’ have been a matter of power, violence, the expansion of territories and spheres of influence /but our country has never colonized others/ and there are testimonies of prospectors, missionaries, soldiers, and anthropologists about the now extinct animist cultures, without the natives telling their own stories. The first contact with the last natural nations had never previously been made by artists, despite the fact that it was a Meeting of Cultures…
This is an expanded version of the book Why the Night is Black, the first edition of which won the 2005 Magnesia Litera Award for Discovery of the Year.