Pygmy Kitabu

Pygmy Kitabu is based on the travels of Jean-Pierre Hallet through central Africa from 1948 through 1960 and his extensive interactions with the isolated Pygmies of the Congo. It was first published in 1973. Unlike his prior book, Congo Kitabu, which chronicled his contacts and investigations into multiple groups in the Congo and nearby regions, Pygmy Kitabu is a detailed observational study primarily of the Efe Pygmies. Great detail and scientific observational method was used in the writing of the book.

The Pygmies have been shown to be one of the oldest intact civilizations on Earth by dNA studies, and this book is one of the few in-depth works detailing their extraordinary culture.

The 1973 documentary Pygmies, one of the few films to document the customs of this disappearing culture, was also written by Jean-Pierre Hallet and released simultaneously with the book. However, the film was rejected by "all major distributors" for release, limiting it to a run in a few local theaters in Los Angeles, California (the Academy Award Theater) and in San Francisco, California (sponsored by the California Academy of Sciences and the San Francisco Zoologic Society). It has also been used as a reference in a linguistics textbook, and as part of a university course syllabus.

Pygmy Kitabu has been translated into 21 languages, including Chinese and Russian.

A movie version based on events from this book and his other books, Congo Kitabu and Animal Kitabu, is in pre-production and is tentatively scheduled for release in 2009.

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