It’s a strident, quavering and strangely melodic sound, seeming to come from the desert’s heart. That’s the call of the jackal, described by Mark Owens as the ‘cry of the Kalahari’.
This re-released book, co-written by the then husband and wife, first published in 1984, details their seven years living in the great Kalahari Desert of Botswana in Africa. While they co-wrote other books about Africa, it is Delia Owens who became a recent bestselling author with her novel, Where the Crawdads Sing. In early 1974, they left the US for Africa to study African carnivores in a large, pristine wilderness, using their research to help conserve that ecosystem.
They write evocatively about that time, when they shared their lives with lions, brown hyenas, jackals, birds, shrews and lizards.
They experienced being stranded without water, confronted by terrorists, battered by storms, and burned by droughts and fires. They learned about the Kalahari’s natural history, how the animals survive drought with no drinking water, but also, sadly, how one of the largest antelope migrations on Earth can be blocked from vital drinking water by fences. The couple lived frugally on grants they received, but one enabled them to buy a light aircraft, and Mark learnt to fly, enabling them to track radio-collared lions from the air.
The writing is as fresh and fascinating as when the book was first published. One can only hope the unforgiving Kalahari remains as unique as the Owens found it.
Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Delia Owens is the co-author of three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa including Cry of the Kalahari.
She has won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing and has been published in Nature, The African Journal of Ecology, and many others.
She currently lives in North Carolina. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel.
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