Eric Hansen was the first westerner ever to walk across the island of Borneo. Completely cut off from the outside world for seven months, he traveled nearly 1,500 miles with small bands of nomadic hunters known as Penan. Beneath the rain forest canopy, they trekked through a hauntingly beautiful jungle where snakes and frogs fly, pigs climb trees, giant carnivorous plants eat mice, and mushrooms glow at night.

At once a modern classic of travel literature and a gripping adventure story, Stranger in the Forest provides a rare and intimate look at the vanishing way of life of one of the last surviving groups of rain forest dwellers. Hansen's absorbing, and often chilling, account of his exploits is tempered with the humor and humanity that prompted the Penan to take him into their world and to share their secrets.

Hansen's adventurous walk across Borneo took place in the 1980s, but the forest and culture that he encountered have changed little during the past century. Though he documents his reactions to isolation and to the tropical forest environment and its culture, he is not successful in describing the indigenous people or the forest; a more sophisticated treatment would have enriched the reader's experience. Despite this weakness he conveys the drama of the adventure, not least his navete in undertaking such an effort with such little planning. James R. Karr, Smithsonian Tropical Research Inst., Balboa, Panama