The Harmless People

This anthropological study explores the lives of the nomadic hunter-gatherers living in the Kalahari desert, who had remained unchanged for thousands of years. The author lived with the Bushmen in the 1950s and updated her book with field trips in the 1980s to show the impact of industrial civilization on their way of life. A powerful and elegiac critique of our own society, this book provides a remarkable insight into an endangered culture. The simple and precise style of writing is perfectly suited to convey the strangeness of their desert life.