The Encounter: Amazon Beaming

Description

1969: Loren McIntyre makes contact with the elusive Mayoruna 'cat people' of the Amazon's Javari Valley. He follows them - into the wild depths of the rainforest. When he realises he is lost, it is already too late. Stranded and helpless, McIntyre must adjust to an alien way of life. Gradually, he finds his perception of the world beginning to change, and a strange relationship starts to develop with the Mayoruna chief - is McIntyre really able to communicate with the headman in a way that goes beyond words, beyond language? Petru Popescu's gripping account of McIntyre's adventures with the Mayoruna tribe, and his quest to find the source of the Amazon, is reissued here to coincide with Complicite's acclaimed new stage production, The Encounter, inspired by McIntyre's incredible story. Pushkin Press are reissuing The Encounter: Amazon Beaming, with a new foreword by Simon McBurney and cover designed by David Pearson, to accompany McBurney's and Complicite's dazzling, highly acclaimed stage production inspired by the book.

Author description

Born in Bucharest in 1944, Petru Popescu was Communist Romania's most provocative young novelist, before he was forced to defect and start writing in English. His Romanian novels Captured and Burial of the Vine are classics of the resistance against totalitarian art. Moving to the United States, he wrote movies including The Last Wave and Death of an Angel, before returning full time to fiction. The Encounter: Amazon Beaming, Almost Adam, The Return, and The Oasis made him known worldwide. In The Encounter, the theme of exploring and winning one's freedom within oneself makes an unforgettable character from the discoverer of the Amazon's source, Loren McIntyre. Undoubtedly, freedom is Popescu's signature motif. Popescu is married to screenplay writer Iris Friedman, and they live in Los Angeles. Born in London in 1957, Simon McBurney is an actor, director and writer, as well as the founder and artistic director of the acclaimed UK theatre company Complicite, whose productions include The Master and Margarita and A Disappearing Number.