Breaking Spears and Mending Hearts: Peacemakers and Restorative Justice in Bougainville Book

What makes this diary pretty fascinating is not its style (although Malinowsi does write very well), its ethnographic content (thin on the ground) nor its portrait of Papua New Guinea and its inhabitants. What makes it fascinating is what it reveals of the dichotomy that continues to exist between a 19th Century culture and a 20th Century mind.
Malinowski shows here that on the one hand, he desperately wanted to understand the 'savages', he wanted (and did manage) to empathise with them; yet on the other hand, he was 'repulsed' by them, and he never saw them as much more than children, as savages to be ordered around.
In this diary he makes it clear how this struggle affected him: he was besieged by fears about his health, endlessly thinking about women he loves, endlessly debating what to do, endlessly dreaming of comfort, of a European life. But at the same time, intensely immersed in his scientific work, looking to a future where he sees his own work as the beginning of a new science, of a new understanding.
He dreams of future acclaim, of publications, and yet experiences intense pleasure and joy in canoeing around the islands, marvelling at their beauty, intoxicated by the scent of flowers, by a sunset...
Of course, what is almost equally interesting is what it gives us to see of the daily life of an ethnologist: hatred of the natives ebbing and flowing, fear of death, of abandonment, rage at not understanding, ecstasy at a scientific insight, despondency, exaltation, lust and repulsion...
And in that last is the whole book encapsulated really: Malinowski is perfectly able to feel desire and lust for a native woman, he's equally able to admire their beauty - and yet he cannot but feel 'repulsed' by them: he cannot bridge the gap between cultures, between continents, or between centuries.
Drab read at times, you've got to read quite a lot at once to immerse yourself in its chronology and repetition, but very rewarding in the end.