In the early 1970s, carrying little more than a change of clothes and a pair of binoculars, Mark and Delia Owens caught a plane to Africa, bought a third-hand Land Rover, and drove deep into the Kalahari Desert. There they lived for seven years, in an unexplored area with no roads, no people, and no source of water for thousands of square miles. In this vast wilderness the Owenses began their zoology research, working alongside lions, brown hyenas, jackals, giraffes, and the many other creatures they came to know.
Cry of the Kalahari is a gripping account of how two young Americans survived the dangers of living in one of the last pristine areas on Earth. Reissued for the first time since its original publication in 1984, this beautiful new edition contains never-seen-before, colour photographs of Mark and Delia on their adventure of a lifetime.
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 Idaho. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel.
"For anyone interested in animals or in real live adventure, this book is a must"
– Jane Goodall
"Extraordinary [...] How the couple overcame the hazards of the desert and came to appreciate its living richness makes fascinating reading [...] Read their remarkable book to be delighted, moved and awed"
– People Magazine
"Leaps off the page and sweeps you away"
– Los Angeles Times
"Splendid [...] If [the Owenses's] survival is a wonder, so is their book – stirring, heartening and elegiac all at once"
– Newsweek
"One of the best testimonials to the perseverance, idealism and general spunk of passionate animal students"
– Washington Post
"Mark and Delia Owens's simple human passion and dedication are invigorating. This is a remarkable and important story"
– Barry Lopez