Where Hornbills Fly: A Journey with the Headhunters of Borneo: Erik Jensen

I.B. TAURIS, 2010

Before British diplomat Erik Jensen pursued a lifelong career travelling the world, working for the United Nations, teaching and writing books, he spent a transformative seven years in the sixties living among the Iban Dyaks, a group of indigenous tribes in Borneo.

With remarkable detail, Jensen recalls his experiences learning the language and traditions of Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, while documenting the pressures from an increasingly globalized world that slowly but irreversibly changed the world of the Iban Dyaks. A personal story at its heart, Where Hornbills Fly is one man’s snapshot of a time and place that needed to be captured on paper before it was lost to the footnotes of time forever.