on an island, a traveler

July 1, 2016 4:07 PM

Seeking fiction recommendations about scientists and anthropologists immersed in other cultures.

Read and loved:
State of Wonder
Euphoria
The People in the Trees

Contemporary is preferred; female protagonists preferred; a critical eye is also preferred. Yes, I have read Return to Laughter.

posted by quadrilaterals to Writing & Language (18 answers total)

The Columbian movie "Embrace of the Serpent," which was nominated this year in the Best Foreign Language category of the Academy Awards, is about a native of an Amazon culture that was visited by two different scientists in two different eras, once when the protagonist was young, and one decades later. I haven't see it yet, but it sounds like a maybe.
posted by Sunburnt at 4:33 PM on July 1, 2016

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert is great, and has a large section where the female protagonist scientist is on an island, immersed in another culture. But it's a long book and the majority of it is not set on the island.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:34 PM on July 1, 2016

Best answer: Fieldwork, by Mischa Berlinski. A reporter in Thailand is looking into the case of a female anthropologist who murdered a missionary. The reporter is the protagonist, but the story of the anthropologist is the meat of the plot. The description makes it sound like a thriller or a mystery, but really it's about how hard it is to truly understand such a different culture.
posted by gideonfrog at 4:50 PM on July 1, 2016

I haven't made it through all of it, but if you want to go science fiction with it, I'd imagine some/most of Ursula K Le Guin's Hainish cycle should check most of these boxes. In particular, her short story Solitude has a female protagonist('s family) observing an alien world.
posted by nvvd at 5:06 PM on July 1, 2016

Best answer: Enchanted Islands by Allison Amend. This is about spies, rather than scientists or anthropologists, in the Galapagos, but has a similar feel- I loved both Euphoria and State of Wonder.
posted by foxonisland at 5:13 PM on July 1, 2016

Best answer: Mating by Norman Rush
posted by vunder at 5:45 PM on July 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God. In this case the scientists and anthropologists are making first contact with extraterrestrials, but the books are beautifully imagined and draw a lot from real accounts of successful and unsuccessful expeditions to different cultures.

Norman Rush's Mating is fiction about a biological anthropologist whose unsuccessful dissertation research is derailed by her encounters with a utopian community in Africa and her gradual inclusion into the community. [female protag]
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 5:48 PM on July 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Male protagonist, but the author is female: Far Afield by Susanna Kaysen.
posted by gudrun at 5:54 PM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Science fiction: A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arneson, and Ammonite by Nicola Griffith, who's more famous for her more recent novel Hild.
posted by moonmilk at 8:21 PM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Carolyn Ives Gilman's Twenty Planets series is some of the best anthropological fiction I've read, and it's sci-fi to boot. The main characters always include an exoethnologist. The Other is truly other here.
posted by jardinier at 10:34 PM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

More science fiction: Golden Witchbreed and Ancient Light by Mary Gentle.
posted by suelac at 11:34 PM on July 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Three Weeks In December by Audrey Schulman - the story of an ethnobotanist in Rwanda, studying the mountain gorillas as fighting between rebel groups and the government forces gets nearer.
posted by ontheradio at 1:23 AM on July 2, 2016

El Hablador (The Storyteller) by Mario Vargas LLosa
posted by bertran at 1:48 AM on July 2, 2016

Mosquito Coast.
posted by fixedgear at 6:07 AM on July 2, 2016

Doris Lessing's Shikasta series
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:53 AM on July 2, 2016

'Death and Designation Among The Asadi' by Michael Bishop is a strange story about a misguided anthropologist that's almost like a parody of colonial exploration accounts.
posted by ovvl at 9:50 AM on July 2, 2016

Not an anthropologist, but reads like an anthropological account of another culture, is the seminal science fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. Le Guin's father was an anthropologist.
posted by moiraine at 10:51 AM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Science fiction short story: Looking Through Lace by Ruth Nestvold.
posted by azalea_chant at 11:56 PM on July 2, 2016