ISBN: 000615090X
Godina izdanja: 1979
Jezik: Engleski
Autor: Strani

Hammond Innes - The Big Footprints
Fontana, 1979
286 str.
meki povez
stanje: vrlo dobro

Decimated by drought and poacher`s bullets, the last of Africa`s majestic elephants face extinction. They are pursued by a `great white hunter` who relies on modern technology to process them as food for the starving natives.
He is opposed by his former partner who is determined that the beasts shall not pay the price for man`s inability to manage his resources wisely.

`Hammond Innes shows great depth of understanding of the complex strands that make up the ecology of a region.`

Those footprints--and those frequent droppings--belong to elephants, the only ones left in East Africa ever since the border wars around "what used to be Tanzania" and ever since mercenary Alex Kirby-Smith (i.e. Stewart Granger) started culling the herds to feed armies and starving tribes. To "Elephant-Man" Cornelius van Delden (Orson Welles), who doesn`t much like armies, tribes, or other people (he has however identified 40 conversational elephantine sounds), "culling" is just plain killing and just plain wrong. Conflict Time indeed, as Kirby-Smith attempts to cull away while Tembo (so the natives call him) takes potshots, hijacks Land Rovers, and nuzzles trunks. All this around a scenic gorge in a volcanic mass called Kulal, and all this told by pasty Colin Tait, a BBC documentary-maker interested only in possible ancient ruins at Kulal`s peak. Van Delden`s daughter Missamari (so the natives call her) and CBS`s Abe Finkel, city-boy-hooked-onwildlife, keep trying to hold Colin`s interest, elephant-wise, and Innes keeps trying to hold ours. But amid "the glimmering, glowing green of growth," the rhino charges, the baboon crouches, the elephant turd drops, and the reader sleeps--unless equipped with a vested interest or an African susceptibility.

Ralph Hammond Innes was an English novelist who wrote over 30 novels, as well as children`s and travel books.He was awarded a C.B.E. (Commander, Order of the British Empire) in 1978. The World Mystery Convention honoured Innes with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bouchercon XXIV awards in Omaha, Nebraska, Oct, 1993.