The Jungle

Along the lines of The Jungle Book, an account of an extraordinary childhood.
An International bestseller: No. 1 in Germany and Great Britain.

At the age of 5, Sabine arrived in Western New Guinea (Indonesia) with her parents, both German missionaries, as well as her brother and sister. Two years later, the whole family settled in with the Fayou tribe, untouched by modern civilisation, in the Lost Valley.

Sabine fell in love with the jungle at first sight. She learned to hunt, climb trees, swim in crocodile infested rivers. She can kill venomous spiders with the help of her bow and arrows, and can light a fire without using matches. Instead of eating fries, she ate grilled insects, and she would chew on bat wings instead of chewing gum.
The Fayou children became her adopted brothers and sisters. But at the heart of their tribe is also where she first saw the sheer brutality of nature, and the meanings of war, and hate: any crime is punished by the Fayou, once a tribe of cannibals, by death.

At the age of seventeen, Sabine finally decided to finish her schooling in a Swiss boarding school. As an adopted Fayou, the severance was painful. “That’s when I learned the meaning of fear”, she says. Everything is new: shopping for groceries, greeting the people she meets, crossing the street.

Sabine has today fully made the transition into modern civilisation, but she still feels homesick, a melancholy that never leaves her.