The Shark God (37 page)
Authors: Charles Montgomery
Charles Mongomery was named a 2003 Lowell Thomas Silver Award winner by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. Published originally in Canada as
The Last Heather
, this book won the prestigious Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction in 2005. The author divides his time between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Mexico City.
www.charlesmontgomery.ca
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Man on boat: © Chris Rainer
Shark in water: © Steve Wrubel/Getty Images
Map: Bridgeman Art Library
The epigraph for chapter 4 from James McAuley, “Captain Quiros,”
Collected Poems
(copyright © Norma McAuley), is reprinted with permission from HarperCollins Publishers Australia.
The epigraph for chapter 5 is reproduced with permission from Northrop Frye's
Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts
, copyright © 2003 University of Toronto Press.
The epigraph for chapter 10 is reproduced with permission from
Solomon Islands
, 3rd ed., © 1997 Lonely Planet Publications.
THE SHARK GOD
. Copyright © 2004 by Charles Montgomery. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition JUNE 2006 ISBN: 9780061856587
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Montgomery, Charles, 1968â
[Last heathen]
The Shark God : encounters with ghosts and ancestors in the South Pacific / Charles Montgomery.â1st ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: The Last heathen. Vancouver, BC : Douglas & McIntyre, 2004.
ISBN-10: 0-06-076516-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-076516-3
1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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*
Swear
is the Solomon Islands pidgin word for “curse,” a translation that reveals the cultural gap between Melanesians and Europeans. If swearingâor cursingâat people is the same as wishing them ill, then it makes sense that Melanesians view those words as synonyms. It also shows their inherent belief in supernatural power. For example, a British trader who yelled “God damn your eyes!” at an islander wasn't actually attempting to blind the man. He was just swearing. But for Melanesians, an invocation is an invocation. There is no difference between a curse and a
swear
.