Customer Reviews

African Hunter (Peter Capstick Library Series)

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This book is personable, entertaining, and full of hunting stories without being too technical. Unexpectedly, in a book about hunting, Von Blixen compassionately remembers his wild animal pets. He sketches their personalities as he does his friends like Hemmingway, Guest, or various safari guides rather than dismiss them as dumb beasts.
Sara Wheeler's Too Close To The Sun set me on a path of fascination with these adventurers who toughed it out in Africa during the Colonial era around WWI. Fortunately her bibliography lists lots of reading material.
I have been humbled to learn of the physical and mental endurance required by those who loved Africa enough to make it home. These were outsiders who lived amongst the tribes in the agricultural regions of the countryside. Europe and Britain couldn't contain the large, soul-searching personalities of Bror Blixen, Isaak Dineson, Beryl Markham, Denys Finch Hatton and their compatriots. I am tracking down, so to speak, each eccentric, stubborn settler mentioned in books about this era.
I wish Von Blixen had told more stories. His life was one Big Adventure; he knew only fascinating people, from the Prince of Wales to revered African Kings, whom we'll only learn about through this book. I'm hooked on tales of these adventurous people.

Blixen has a writing style which is very easy to read. He writes just like he was speaking with you by the fire and his book is full of entertaining anecdotes and opinions related to the behaviors of game and of the places he visited during his career in East Africa. Blixen relies on specific details less than some of the other writers in this series and paints a perhaps less vivid portrait of the bush but his adventures are entertaining and his insights are heartwarming. It's easy for me to see why people had trouble disliking the man in spite of his amorous proclivities.