After the Ancestors

'This is a marvellous book. Written in a narrative style far too rare in anthropology, it is a fascinating, enlightening and engaging story which deserves a wide readership.' Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo
'A beautifully told tale by a sharp-eyed anthropologist.' Jeremy MacClancy, author of Anthropology in the Public Arena (2013)
'There is an epic tone to the story told in After the Ancestors, with its vast cast, its slow unfolding, and its deep tensions, and an almost Shakespearean quality ...' Tim Hannigan, Review of Asian Books
'This is a good story about real people, well told ...' Joy Hendry, Times Higher Education
'After the Ancestors belongs with works such as Tristes Tropiques, Clastres' Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians, Turnbull's day-and-night diptych of Forest People and Mountain People, and Descola's Spears of Twilight, though only Descola's approaches Andrew Beatty's new book for sheer depth of ethnographic detail ... I hope this book will be read by a general audience. It is built on ethnographic work of quite phenomenal quality, and it largely succeeds in its efforts to move its readers and make us care about our protagonists ... Maybe all ethnographers should at some point think about how they would write their fieldwork as a story, with emotive hooks and narrative arcs and, however messy, a beginning and an end. Not because all ethnography should be this way, but because it might help us crystallize what is 'human' in the big literary sense - emotionally compelling - about our work.' Anthropology of this Century (aotcpress.com)