“No one writes more vividly of the continent in which his ancestors were born…
Introduction to Collins Edition
“No one writes more vividly of the continent in which his ancestors were born… He is able to draw with equal assurance on the pioneering past and on the strange paradoxes and incongruities of present-day Africa, where, as he points out, ‘the changes are still superficial and a dark pulse still beats like a throbbing in the night…
Everything is still loaded against progress. Disease, the climate, termites, insects, fires, storms, droughts and floods. A violent continent largely peopled by men who, at the moment, have fallen between two stools, those of the past and the future’
To read these stories is to feel and hear the dark pulse of Africa, and to partake in Stuart Cloete’s deeply rooted knowledge of life and wildlife which he imparts with such excitement, dramatic sense and literary grace.”
