The Amazon Basin, rich in minerals, fascinatiq~

yet forbidding in its mystery, has over the centuries

attracted the dregs of civilisation. With their

superior technology and unhampered by moral

considerations, they have brought miserable

death to the free, uncompromising and difficult-

to-pacify Indians who live there. Tribe after tribe,

with no desiie to accept an alien authority or to

adapt to an alien culture, has been reduced to

pitiful remnants or exterminated completely.

Lucien Bodard, is a well-known French journa-

list. This is the vivid account of his own investi-

gation of the continuous human tragedy of the

Amazon Basin. I-le tells of his own encounters

with a wide spectrum of humanity in the cities

and the jungles of Brazil. He tells of sickening

cruelty, cynical exploitation and of bureaucratic

indifference, incompetence and outright corrup-

tion. His skilful prose re-creates the horrific

actuality of the results of centuries of bloodshed

in the oppressive, dehumanising atmosphere of

the green hell .