Author Guide · Nature Writing and Fiction
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In 1973 Peter Matthiessen walked for about two months into the Dolpo region of Nepal with the biologist George Schaller, hoping to see a snow leopard, an animal Westerners had glimpsed only twice in the previous 25 years. His wife, Deborah Love, had died of cancer the year before. The book he wrote about it, The Snow Leopard (1978), won the National Book Award, and thirty years later the novel Shadow Country (2008) won it again, making him the only writer to win in both nonfiction and fiction. In between he co-founded The Paris Review, became a Zen teacher, and wrote about New Guinea, East Africa, Long Island fishermen and the Florida Everglades. This guide covers his 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1959–2014 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Peter Matthiessen wrote more than thirty books. The best known are The Snow Leopard (1978), his Himalayan journey and National Book Award winner, the novel At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965), In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983) and Shadow Country (2008), which won the National Book Award for Fiction. Start with The Snow Leopard; the list below shows where his fiction and his reporting lead from there.
Where to Start with Peter Matthiessen
If you want his defining book
→ The Snow Leopard (1978) — the Himalayan journey that won the National Book Award.
If you want his fiction
→ At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965) — missionaries and a mercenary in the South American rain forest.
If you want his biggest novel
→ Shadow Country (2008) — the Everglades trilogy rewritten as one book.
If you want his reporting
→ In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983) — the Leonard Peltier case and the lawsuits it caused.
12 Peter Matthiessen Books, in Order
Wildlife in America
His first nonfiction book, a history of what happened to North American wildlife after European settlement, including the species that were hunted or crowded out to extinction. He calls humans “the highest predator”, and the only one prone to destroying itself.
The Cloud Forest
A naturalist’s account of his 1960 travels through the back country of South America. It was the first of his books to be serialised in The New Yorker.
Under the Mountain Wall
Written after he joined the 1961 Harvard-Peabody Expedition to the highlands of New Guinea, the expedition on which Michael Rockefeller later disappeared. It describes the life, rituals and warfare of a Dani community in the Baliem Valley. After reading it, Truman Capote credited Matthiessen with inventing the “nonfiction novel”.
At Play in the Fields of the Lord
At a malarial outpost in the South American rain forest, the missionary Martin Quarrier has come to convert the Niaruna people, while Lewis Moon, a stateless mercenary who is part Indian, has been hired by the local comandante to kill them. It was a National Book Award finalist in 1966, and in 1991 Héctor Babenco filmed it with Tom Berenger, John Lithgow, Daryl Hannah and Kathy Bates.
The Tree Where Man Was Born
An account of his journeys through East Africa, its wildlife and its peoples. It was a National Book Award finalist in 1973.
Far Tortuga
The doomed last voyage of a turtle-fishing schooner and its crew, drawn from his own 1967 trip on a turtle boat from Grand Cayman to the reefs off Nicaragua. He spent about eight years on it and stripped the prose of almost all adjectives and adverbs, telling much of it through the crew’s dialogue. He called it his favourite of his books.
The Snow Leopard
In 1973 Matthiessen joined the biologist George Schaller on a two-month trek to Shey Gompa in the Dolpo region of Nepal, where Schaller studied Himalayan blue sheep and both men hoped to see the rare snow leopard. The book is also a Buddhist meditation on loss, written after the death of his wife, Deborah Love. It won the National Book Award twice, in 1979 (Contemporary Thought) and 1980 (paperback nonfiction).
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
The case of Leonard Peltier, convicted in 1977 of murdering two FBI agents in a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation; Matthiessen argues the case rested on fabricated evidence and government misconduct. Former South Dakota governor William Janklow and FBI agent David Price sued for libel, and the book was out of circulation for most of a decade until the courts dismissed both suits. It returned in 1991 with a new epilogue.
Men’s Lives
A history of the commercial fishermen of eastern Long Island, families who had fished there for about three centuries, and of the forces pushing them out: the sport-fishing lobby’s campaign against netting striped bass, pollution and a real-estate boom. Matthiessen fished with them on and off from the 1950s.
Killing Mister Watson
The first of three novels about Edgar J. Watson, a planter in the Ten Thousand Islands of the Florida Everglades who was shot by his neighbours in 1910. The story is pieced together from the voices of the people who knew him. It was followed by Lost Man’s River (1997) and Bone by Bone (1999).
Shadow Country
The three Watson novels, which began as one 1,500-page manuscript, revised and condensed into a single 890-page book. It won the 2008 National Book Award for Fiction, when Matthiessen was 81, and the William Dean Howells Medal in 2010.
In Paradise
In 1996 Clements Olin, a professor of Slavic literature, joins about 140 people on a two-week meditation retreat at the site of Auschwitz, partly to learn what happened to his mother. It was published on 8 April 2014, three days after Matthiessen died.
In What Order to Read Peter Matthiessen
Apart from the Watson books, nothing in Matthiessen continues from one book to the next, so you can read by place or subject. The one rule: read either Shadow Country or the three earlier Watson novels (Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, Bone by Bone), not both. Shadow Country is his final, revised version of the same story.
Publication order shows two careers running side by side. He considered himself a novelist first, but his travel and natural history books, from The Cloud Forest to The Snow Leopard, made his name. Under the Mountain Wall and Far Tortuga show the two meeting: reporting written like fiction, and fiction built from his own voyages.
A reading path
1. The Snow Leopard (1978)
2. At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965)
3. Far Tortuga (1975)
4. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983)
5. Shadow Country (2008)
Everything Else Peter Matthiessen Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 20 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Novels and short stories
7
7 books · 1954–1999
- 1954Race Rockhis first novel
- 1955Partisansa novel finished while he worked for the CIA in Paris
- 1961Raditzerhis third novel
- 1984Midnight Turning Grayshort stories
- 1989On the River Styxshort stories
- 1997Lost Man’s Riverthe second Watson novel
- 1999Bone by Bonethe third Watson novel, narrated by Watson
Nature, travel and other nonfiction
13
13 books · 1967–2003
- 1967The Shorebirds of North Americanatural history
- 1967Oomingmakan expedition to the musk ox island in the Bering Sea
- 1969Sal Si Puedeson Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers’ movement
- 1971Blue Meridianthe search for the great white shark
- 1981Sand RiversAfrica, with the photographer Hugo van Lawick
- 1984Indian CountryNative American land and sovereignty
- 1986Nine-Headed Dragon RiverZen journals, 1969–1982
- 1991African SilencesAfrica’s threatened wildlife
- 1992BaikalSacred Sea of Siberia
- 1995East of Lo Monthangin the land of Mustang, Nepal
- 2000Tigers in the Snowthe Siberian tiger
- 2001The Birds of Heaventravels with cranes
- 2003End of the Earthvoyage to Antarctica
The years · 1927–2014
Quick facts about Peter Matthiessen
- Known for
- Writing about wild places and the people at their edges in both nonfiction and fiction, which made him the only writer to win the National Book Award in both.
- 1927
- Born in New York City
- 1953
- Co-founds The Paris Review in Paris
- 1978
- The Snow Leopard
- 1984
- Receives dharma transmission as a Zen teacher
- 2008
- National Book Award for Shadow Country
- 2014
- Dies on Long Island, aged 86
- Born
- 22 May 1927, New York City; his father was an architect and conservationist
- Died
- 5 April 2014, on Long Island, New York, aged 86
- Education
- Yale, B.A. 1950, with a year at the Sorbonne
- Founded
- The Paris Review, 1953, with George Plimpton, Harold Humes and others
- Zen
- Dharma transmission from Bernard Glassman, 1984
- Honours
- National Book Award 1979, 1980 and 2008; Heinz Award 2000
- Married
- Patsy Southgate, Deborah Love and Maria Eckhart
The red mark is 1978: The Snow Leopard, his Himalayan journey and first National Book Award winner.
How Peter Matthiessen Writes: Field Notes and Fiction
Matthiessen called himself a novelist first. He said fiction energised him, while a day of nonfiction research left him “stale and drained”, and he described his fiction as “an exploratory process”, long and slow. Yet most of his books come from fieldwork: an expedition in New Guinea, a turtle boat out of Grand Cayman, a trek in Nepal, years with the fishermen of Long Island.
The two sides feed each other. Under the Mountain Wall tells a reported story with a novelist’s scenes and characters, which is why Capote credited it with inventing the nonfiction novel, while Far Tortuga turns a real voyage into fiction with almost no adjectives or adverbs, much of it carried by dialogue. The Watson novels go further, building one man out of dozens of competing voices.
His nonfiction also carries an argument. Wildlife in America, Men’s Lives and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse each take the side of animals or communities losing ground, and The Snow Leopard sets close natural observation beside Zen practice and grief. For other writers who join precise attention to the natural world with an inner journey, see the guides to Annie Dillard and Henry David Thoreau below.
Frequently asked questions about Peter Matthiessen’s books
How many books has Peter Matthiessen written?
More than thirty, fiction and nonfiction. This page covers 12 key books, from Wildlife in America (1959) to In Paradise (2014); the rest, including his first novel Race Rock (1954), are listed under Everything Else.
What are Peter Matthiessen’s books in order?
The key books are Wildlife in America (1959), The Cloud Forest (1961), Under the Mountain Wall (1962), At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965), The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972), Far Tortuga (1975), The Snow Leopard (1978), In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983), Men’s Lives (1986), Killing Mister Watson (1990), Shadow Country (2008) and In Paradise (2014).
Where should I start with Peter Matthiessen?
The Snow Leopard (1978), his account of a 1973 trek in Nepal with George Schaller. If you prefer fiction, start with At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965).
What is Peter Matthiessen’s most famous book?
The Snow Leopard, which won the National Book Award in 1979 and again in its paperback edition in 1980. Among his novels, At Play in the Fields of the Lord and Shadow Country are the best known.
Did Peter Matthiessen win the National Book Award?
Three times: for The Snow Leopard in 1979 (Contemporary Thought) and 1980 (paperback nonfiction), and for Shadow Country in 2008 (Fiction). He is the only writer to win in both nonfiction and fiction. At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1966) and The Tree Where Man Was Born (1973) were finalists.
Should I read Shadow Country or the Watson trilogy?
One or the other. Shadow Country (2008) is Matthiessen’s revised, single-volume version of Killing Mister Watson (1990), Lost Man’s River (1997) and Bone by Bone (1999), and the one that won the National Book Award.
Was Peter Matthiessen in the CIA?
Yes. While living in Paris in the early 1950s he worked for the CIA, and in 1953 he co-founded The Paris Review with George Plimpton, Harold Humes and others. This became public in a 2006 film; in a 2008 interview with Charlie Rose he said, “I invented The Paris Review as cover.” He left the agency and returned to the United States in 1954.
Have any of Peter Matthiessen’s books been filmed?
At Play in the Fields of the Lord was filmed in 1991 by Héctor Babenco, with Tom Berenger, John Lithgow, Daryl Hannah, Aidan Quinn, Tom Waits and Kathy Bates. Earlier, Luis Buñuel adapted his short story “Travelin Man” as The Young One (1960).
Was Peter Matthiessen a Buddhist?
Yes. He began practising Zen with his wife Deborah Love, received dharma transmission from Bernard Glassman in 1984 and became a Zen teacher himself. His Zen journals were published as Nine-Headed Dragon River (1986).
Is Peter Matthiessen still alive?
No. He died on 5 April 2014 on Long Island, New York, aged 86, after more than a year of treatment for leukaemia. His last novel, In Paradise, came out three days later.
Footnotes
- Peter Matthiessen — Wikipedia
- The Snow Leopard — Wikipedia
- In the Spirit of Crazy Horse — Wikipedia
- Peter Matthiessen, The Art of Fiction No. 157 — The Paris Review, 1999
- Force of Nature — The American Scholar
- In Paradise — Kirkus Reviews, 2014
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“For the writer, therefore the reader, fresh truth is exhilarating, even painful truth, as in Kafka or Céline.”
— Peter Matthiessen, interviewed by Howard Norman, The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 157 (1999)
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