*Marble and Myrtle*, a collection of essays by Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (b. 1951), immerses the reader in the ethnographic, historical, and philosophical context of his project regarding "cannibal"—or Indigenous—thought. Unlike de Castro’s major work—*Cannibal Metaphysics*, a treatise dense with specialized terminology—*Marble and Myrtle* offers an accessible exploration of questions to which the concepts of Indigenous thought provide answers. The book’s title essay is a historical study based on observations made by Catholic catechists in the 16th and 17th centuries; in their attempts to convert American Indians to Christianity, these missionaries compared the Indigenous peoples' conceptions of the soul, the body, and the afterlife with the beliefs of other cultures. De Castro analyzes anthropological materials spanning various periods and describes the mindset of the inhabitants of the New World, linking it to post-structuralist ideas.