The Marsh Lions by Brian Jackman, Jonathan & Angie Scott: book review

The Marsh Lions: The Story of an African Pride (1982, this edition 2012) is set in the Masai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya.

It is the true story of a pride of lions, followed and observed for two years from January 1978 to January 1980. There is a Postscript from February 1980 to September 1981, and this edition has an epilogue written in 2011.

Readers can follow the daily lives of the Marsh lions, which begins with Dark Mane, Old Man, Young Girl, Notch, Shadow, and Mkubwa (Big). Then comes Scar, Brando, Old Girl, and lions of other prides. But it is also the story of the wild dogs, cheetahs, leopards, hyenas, warthogs, elephants, elands, and a myriad of birds, all interacting in their communal kingdom. It is also the story of droughts and rains.

It describes the massive annual migration in June and July when thousands of wildebeest and zebra leave the Serengeti National Park in neighbouring Tanzania and cross the northern border into Kenya. In 1948 land between the Mara River and the Tanzanian border were declared a national reserve, which expanded in 1961.

In many respects the late 1970s and early 1980s was the ‘golden age’ for lions in Kenya when land was abundant and people were scarce.

Beautifully told with sentences such as, ‘In the first golden hour after sunrise, when the sentinel olive trees and flat-roofed acacias flung their long shadows across the grasslands, a Masai youth was walking over the dusty plains’ and the description of meat-eating marabou storks: ‘Hideously ugly, with scabby heads, pendulous neck pouches and leering Skid Row eyes, they stand for hours in the trees, watching for corpses in the river or surveying the Marsh for leftover kills.’

This is the African equivalent of the 1972 British book ‘Watership Down’ by Richard Adams (1920-2016), but infinitely more real, and more unpredictable. Every birth and death and struggle for life is captured in poetic, evocative writing, with amazing glossy colour photographs.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

Comments

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass

The Beggars' Strike by Aminata Sow Fall: book review

The Beggar’sStrike (1979 in French and 1981 in English) is set in an unstated country in West Africa in a city known only as The Capital. Undoubtedly, Senegalese author Sow Fall writes of her own experiences. It was also encapsulated in the 2000 film, Battu , directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko from Mali. Mour Ndiaye is the Director of the Department of Public Health and Hygiene, with the opportunity of a distinguished and coveted promotion to Vice-President of the Republic. Tourism has declined and the government blames the local beggars in The Capital. Ndiaye must rid the streets of beggars, according to a decree from the Minister. Ndiaye instructs his department to carry out weekly raids. One of the raids leads to the death of lame beggar, Madiabel, who ran into an oncoming vehicle as he tried to escape, leaving two wives and eight children. Soon after, another raid resulted in the death of the old well-loved, comic beggar Papa Gorgui Diop. Enough is enou

FEAST OR FAMINE

Search This Blog