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This story follows a Cabin boy from 16th century Spain, as he makes a disastrous journey inland into the "new world' with the crew. They are attacked by indigenous people, and graphic descriptions of rape, murder, cannibalism, general vulgarity, etc follow as the narrator reflects on his captivity years later.

I realize the point of the novel is to examines the role and flaws of memory, especially in a cultural context. The veracity of the narrator's recollections are subtly undermined by the text to ask you to reframe the role of the indigenous people in the history of Latin America.

However, I feel like the actual effect of the novel did somewhat undermine its stated intent. Mostly what made the biggest impact and stayed with me after the novel were the repeated graphic descriptions of the 'savagery' of the indigenous people, despite the fact the book makes a less impactful plea to challenge it.

I gave it 3 stars.

Rating: 3.5 stars

The crew of a Spanish ship is attacked by a cannibalistic tribe in 16th century Argentina. They spare a cabin boy who spends the next several years living with and observing the tribe. The cabin boy is eventually rescued by conquistadors and taken to Europe, where he reflects on his experiences.

I found the book fascinating from a historical perspective, yet often a little too graphic for my tastes.

Pre-2016 review:

****

WARNING (and spoiler alert): Contains cannibal and orgiastic scenes.

A young sailor on a Spanish ship in the sixteenth century survives an attack from an Indian tribe and spends ten years with his captors. Not really understanding at first why his captors spared him, he becomes the witness of the tribe's way of life, with its many incomprehensible habits. Upon his return to 'civilization', he sets out to live a more 'normal' life, and ends up writing his story. This was an enjoyable surprise; the story is very well written, at times poetic, at times philosophical. You can feel hints of Borges in some of the descriptions or some of the philosophical reflections. The narrator tells his tale in a very objective and thorough manner; this almost makes accept some of the atrocities being described. A very interesting exploration about cultural differences, cultural identity and the wavering nature of memory.

The "witness" of the title, is a young cabin boy on a sixteenth century Spanish ship who becomes the sole survivor after the indigenous American people attack the sailors. Our narrator, and witness, gives us a straight forward accounting of the indigenous people's world view as best he can decipher it and writes this account some 60 years after the initial event when he is an old man living in Spain
The book investigates the classic interpretation of historical writings; that history is written from a specific perspective, by specific people who can not divorce themselves from their own prejudices. It also illuminates the nature of language and the inability of language to describe "the new world" because the language itself was of the old world. A third theme is the nature of memory in holding one's existence in place.

The cabin boy/narrator spends 10 years largely doing nothing but witnessing the indigenous people's way of life and their core need to keep themselves and their world in existence by a series of strange behaviors including cannibalism and drunken orgies. The doubt that all humans have regarding the meaning of life, becomes a cultural level uncertainty for these indigenous people, who believe that they alone can keep life and death in balance enough to continue to exist. As this tribe, in their belief system, is the only center of the universe, if they do not perform their duties rigorously, the whole world will cease to exist along with them.

It is worth noting that there are no documented cases of cannibalism in the Americas although the church was said to allow this myth to spread because it made it seem that the church had a clear mandate to come in and force change on the indigenous people.

The book is well written, and worth the contemplation necessary to understand the strange tale. The killing and sexual orgies are described in such a way that I could read about them without too much horror. I also found the philosophical musing of the old man narrator at the end of the book to be of interest. All and all an interesting book.