Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Mark and Delia Owens, Corsair, $34.99.
Missed reading this remarkable memoir when it was first released, but am glad I was able to get hold of the reissued copy, and in full colour, over this festive holiday break.
By the best-selling author of Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens and her then- partner Mark Owens, chart their time researching wildlife in the Kalahari Desert.
Carrying little more than a change of clothes and a pair of binoculars, the two catch a plane to Africa, buy a third-hand Land Rover, and drive deep into the Kalahari Desert. They lived there for seven extraordinary years, in an unexplored area with no roads, no people, and no source of water for thousands of square miles. In this vast wilderness they began their zoology research, working along with animals that had never before been exposed to humans.
Cry of the Kalahari is their story of life with lions, brown hyenas, jackals, giraffes, wild dogs and the many other creatures they came to know. It is also a gripping account of how they survived the dangers of living in one of the last and largest pristine areas on earth.
Written with bright, poetic beautiful lyricism, adventurer and broadcaster Ben Fogle says in his foreword the story that unfolds within these pages is one of adventure, bravery, survival, understanding. Above all, it is a love affair with Botswana.
I agree with Ben, for those of us who have travelled across Africa, we will recognise flashes of our own experience. The smells, the colours, the riches of her wildlife. The harsh sun, the aridity. It is a region that haunts your dreams. The heady mix of people, wildlife and wilderness is enough to seduce the hardest of hearts.
Cry of the Kalahari stands tall as a testament to Mark and Delia’s passion and dedication for the environment and its wildlife. It’s a ground-breaking piece of nature writing that’s as relevant, exciting and absorbing now as it was when it was originally published in 1984.
