THE IMPOSSIBLE FIVE

Justin Fox Tafelberg

THIS is a brilliant book. I couldn’t bear delighting in it alone, so I followed my daughter about, reading passage after passage from it. We were alternately lit-with-awe or dissolved in a breathless, hapless heap of mirth. There was not a page that didn’t enchant. Justin Fox’s mission, to find the “impossible five” – the Cape mountain leopard, the aardvark, pangolin, the riverine rabbit and the naturally occurring white lion – is a journey into magic, myth and takes one through many a starlit night and luminous African dawn. The book brings to vivid life not just these elusive animals, but equally the extraordinary people who track, protect and dedicate their lives to them. Here, human and animal worlds meld in an exquisite affirmation of some of nature’s most fascinating South African expressions.

– Karen Kotze