Nigel Barley (anthropologist)

Nigel Frederick Barley (born 1947) is a British anthropologist known for his books based on his anthropological field work, which have been treated as travel writing.

He wrote a historical novel Island of Demons (2009), loosely based on the German artist Walter Spies, who lived for most of his career in Bali.

His first book based on his time there was the humorous Not a Hazardous Sport (1989), describing his experiences in Tana Toraja in the mountains of central Sulawesi.

[2] The journalist and author Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote that whereas "modern literature", as represented by works nominated in French literary awards, largely failed to talk about people from other cultures, Barley's Innocent Anthropologist, like Colin Thubron's Behind the Wall and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines did "show us the modern cultures, ideas and behaviour of people who live in different geographical latitudes and who believe in different gods from us", even if these books were not considered to be "real literature" by some within the literary elite.

"[3] Tim Hannigan, reflecting on Not a Hazardous Sport in the Asian Review of Books, wrote that British travel writing has had a "preeminent court jester"[4] in each generation, from Robert Byron in the 1930s, Eric Newby in the 1950s, and Redmond O'Hanlon in the 1980s.

[4] But in his view, Barley's writing has survived the test of time "in a postcolonial world"[4] far better than O'Hanlon's, not least because, as an anthropologist, his observations on the people he wrote about were underpinned by "professional fieldwork ... proper language training and research".