Starlings Laughing: A Memoir of Africa [Hardcover]

June Vendall Clark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1991

A memoir of Africa, in which June Vendall Clark chronicles the struggle to establish a wildlife reserve.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Clark ( Wild Eden ) looks back on a life of adventure and personal difficulty in Africa. Raised in a Rhodesian mining town, she started a farm near Bulawayo and lived for many years in a tent on an island in the Okavango Swamp Delta in Bechuanaland (now Botswana). She and her first husband hunted crocodiles, ran safaris and convinced the local tribes to create the Moremi Wildlife Reserve, the first such reserve in Africa. Clark was able to make pets of lions and jackals and survive encounters with leopards, wounded lions, pythons and veld fires, yet for 25 years she was unable to disentangle herself from her destructive marriage. Now living in England with her second husband, she paints a vivid picture of a stormy first marriage as well as of the land and the people of southern Africa during the final days of British colonialism. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This is an autobiographical account of a woman who grew up and lived much of her life in Africa in the days just before independence. Much of the story takes place in what is now Zimbabwe, where she and her husband attempted to run a farm and, later on, in the Kalahari desert of what is now Botswana, where they were ultimately involved in creating a game reserve. As such, it reads like a cross between Elspeth Huxley's writings and Joy Adamson's Born Free . It is an honest, interesting narrative and an exam ple of what life was like for Europeans during the colonial era. This book should appeal to the general reader interested in biography, travel accounts, or books about animals (the author has published three books about her work with animals under the name of June Kay). Recommended.
- Paul H. Thomas, Hoover Inst. Lib., Stanford Univ., Cal.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co (April 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688105408
• ISBN-13: 978-0688105402
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,772,911 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #82 in Books > History > Africa > Botswana

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Memoirs of Africa, February 24, 2003

By 

John Volrath (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Starlings Laughing: A Memoir of Africa (Hardcover)

I have read June Clark's book from the point of view of an ex-pat in colonial Africa. It brought back a flood of memories of my own experience of living in Africa in the 1950's and 60's; then a land teeming with the big game animals and vast savanahs and forestations. The book is well written, and is a tribute to the dogged determination of the author and her husband to create a tribal game reserve in the Okavango swamps. The hardships endured and the bravery of the author is unimaginable for those content with a nine to five job in the western world. Were it not for people of similar persausion to the authors Africa's inheritance would be the poorer.
John Volrath