Wildlife Related Books - Fiction

Discuss interesting books on conservation matters
Post Reply
User avatar
Flutterby
Posts: 43849
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:28 pm
Country: South Africa
Location: Gauteng, South Africa
Contact:

Re: Wildlife Related Books

Post by Flutterby »

Kamadejo wrote:The White Bone

- Barbara Gowdy
- ISBN 978-0312264123

(German: Der weiße Knochen / ISBN 3888972191)

Image

The White Bone opens with five family trees. Gowdy's pachyderms include an orphaned visionary, She-Spurns (more familiarly known as Mud), and the "fine-scenter" She-Deflates, not to mention nurse cow She-Soothes and the bull Tall Time. (Though Gowdy's nomenclature may displease some readers, Dumbo wasn't exactly an inspiring name either.) Then, before her tragic narrative even begins, Gowdy offers a second feat of empathy and imagination, a glossary of elephant language. Afflicted by premonitions and obsessed with memory and safety, these animals have terms that range from the formal to the low, the metaphorical to the deeply physical: the "Eternal Shoreless Water" is oblivion, a "sting" is a bullet, and a "flow-stick" a snake. Of course, if you have "trunk," you possess "soulfulness, depth of spirit"--something every participant in Gowdy's fourth novel desperately needs. Initially, her characters' impressions of familiar objects are amusing, but bright comedy precedes dark tragedy. Witness Mud's take on jeeps: "On their own, vehicles prefer to sleep, but whenever a human burrows inside them they race and roar and discharge a foul odour." Needless to say, such speeding tends to precede a killing fest.

Alas, this is a book heavy with omens and slaughter, and Gowdy makes each elephant so individual, so conscious, that their separate fates are impossible to bear. When Tall Time, for instance, hears a helicopter, nothing, not even Gowdy's poetry, can save him: "The shots that pelt his hide feel as light as rain. It is bewildering to be brought down under their little weight." As the devastation increases, and her characters fail, and fail again, to find the magical white bone that should lead them to safety, the novel becomes a litany of pain and death. The only success is Barbara Gowdy's, in getting so thoroughly under the skin of her elephantine protagonists.


User avatar
Flutterby
Posts: 43849
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:28 pm
Country: South Africa
Location: Gauteng, South Africa
Contact:

Re: Wildlife Related Books

Post by Flutterby »

Silent Predator

- Tony Park
- ISBN 9780857381170

Image

In a luxury private safari lodge in Kruger National Park, Detective Sergeant Tom Furey has just woken to a protection officer's worst nightmare. The VIP in his charge, British Assistant Minister for Defence, Robert Greeves, has vanished. Knowing his career is on the line, Furey vows not to stop until Greeves is found - dead or alive. He and his South African counterpart, the attractive Inspector Sannie Van Rensburg, go against official orders and start the search for the suspected band of terrorists through the outer limits of the National Park to the coastal waters of Mozambique. Tom must assume nothing, trust no one, the silent predator is about to pounce. Torture, pain and death are thrown into the mix with sex, scandal and love, set against the huge, wild landscapes of Southern Africa.


User avatar
Flutterby
Posts: 43849
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:28 pm
Country: South Africa
Location: Gauteng, South Africa
Contact:

Re: Wildlife Related Books

Post by Flutterby »

Far Horizon

- Tony Park
- ISBN 9780330421478

Image

Mike Williams is leading a supposedly carefree life as an overland tour guide in Africa. But just a year ago, the former Australia Army officer had endured the brutal death of his girlfriend at the hands of ivory hunters in Mozambique.Now the South African Police are on the murderers' trail and need Mike's help. But he has a truckload of tourists who have no idea what has been asked of him... although one passenger has her suspicions.Following a chase through some of Africa's most spectacular locations, Mike gets his shot at revenge... but at what cost?


User avatar
Flutterby
Posts: 43849
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:28 pm
Country: South Africa
Location: Gauteng, South Africa
Contact:

Re: Wildlife Related Books

Post by Flutterby »

Blood Safari

- Deon Meyer
- ISBN 9780802119032

Image

Emma Le Roux, a beautiful young woman, sees her brother named on the Cape Town news as the prime suspect in the killing of four poachers and a witch doctor. But it can’t be possible: he disappeared twenty years ago in Kruger National Park and is believed to be dead. Emma tries to find out more but is attacked and barely escapes. So she hires Lemmer, a personal security expert, and sets out into the Lowveld in search of the truth. A complicated man with a dishonorable past, Lemmer just wants to do his job and avoid getting personally involved. But as they search for answers from the rural police, they encounter racial and political tensions, greed, corruption, and violence unlike anything they have ever known. A chilling novel from a master of suspense, Blood Safari takes the reader beyond the headlines and into the complicated present and dangerous history of South Africa.


User avatar
Flutterby
Posts: 43849
Joined: Sat May 19, 2012 12:28 pm
Country: South Africa
Location: Gauteng, South Africa
Contact:

Re: Wildlife Related Books

Post by Flutterby »

The Constant Gardener

- John Le Carre
- ISBN 9780743287203

Image

The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time. The novel opens in northern Kenya with the gruesome murder of Tessa Quayle--young, beautiful, and dearly beloved to husband Justin. When Justin sets out on a personal odyssey to uncover the mystery of her death, what he finds could make him not only a suspect among his own colleagues, but a target for Tessa's killers as well.


Post Reply

Return to “Books & Recommended Reading”