Tristes Tropiques Claude Levi-Strauss. It is beauti-fully written. Translated into English as “Sad Tropics,” it recounts his travels and research, most of which took place in Brazil, India, and the Caribbean in the early 1900s. Tristes Tropiques is a 1955 memoir by French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. "It is rigorous, subtle, and bold in thought. Though it is autobiographical and makes no particular claim to scholarly respect, it does reflect—mostly poorly—on the structuralist theories that have given Lévi-Strauss so much notoriety. This literate personage journeyed through central Brazil in the 30s, only to record his findings some 20 later in his book Tristes Tropiques, an untranslated title because no equivalent can be found in English.Reminiscent of his forebear, Marcel Proust, Levi-Strauss presents us with memories distilled through time from which a structure emerges. Tristes Tropiques is one of the great books of our century," said Susan Sontag. First published in 1955, Claude Levi-Strauss's accounts of his researches among the peoples of the Amazon is a fascinating study and influential in understanding the organization of human society. After disdaining 'travel writing' Levi-Strauss went on to write a masterpiece that among many other things is ultimate travel writing. Tristes Tropiques was originally written in 1955 about a Brazilian expedition in the late 30's. And, like all great books, it bears an absolutely personal stamp; it speaks with a human voice."