The Man Who Spoke Snakish by Andrus Kivirähk

OK, one of the strangest premises readers are ever likely to come across, yet this book is wholly accessible, easy to read, and often humorous. Once you get used to talking snakes, then you discover that the hero's mother was off having an affair with a bear... when, unhappily, they were discovered by her husband who startled the bear. Bears are really very gentle but get nervous when surprised, and on this occasion he reacted by biting the husband's head off. A tragic misunderstanding.
When you live in the forest of Estonia, all you really need to survive is a good command of snakish. Most of the beasts bow before the ancient authority of snakish. So if you're hungry, a deer or a goat will come along, get the word, and offer his neck for the sacrifice.
This is a kind pre-lapsarian universe. Nobody 'works.' No sweat of the brow.
But changes have come in the form of outlanders who cut down trees, build villages, plant fields, and sweat over their labor to earn their daily bread -- which they eat instead of the freely offered meat of the wild forest. They're also Christians.
Andrus Kivirahk's book offers a kind of transvaluation of all values. We see the world from the perspective of the dying wilderness-dwellers, whose values, skills, and way of life are being pushed to extinction by the new. While it's still obvious to our narrator that his world is far superior -- freer, safer, more independent, in tune to what it is rather than what some alien divinity wishes to create. Far easier, and more satisfying, to crawl into a nest of vipers to spend a winter warm and protected than fight the elements in a village hut by burning an acre of trees.