Getaway (South Africa)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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English professor Ian Glenn founded the Centre for Film & Media Studies at the University of Cape Town. His previous work on Levaillant was co-authoring the Brenthurst Press edition of François Levaillant and the Birds of Africa (2004), a beautiful illustrate­d birding book, and editing and translatin­g his Voyage into the Interior of Africa for the Van Riebeeck Society (2007). Now The First Safari, which has been several decades in the writing, tells the full story of this remarkable explorer, ornitholog­ist (he named several of our birds) , anthropolo­gist and investigat­ive reporter. He produced the first major, widely read account of Southern Africa back in 1789 (with a sequel in 1795) – and in the process pioneered new forms of literature in his accounts of his travels. ‘Levaillant was the most translated author writing about this country until Mandela, yet he isn’t on any syllabus or remembered in our culture in a positive way,’ says Glenn. ‘So part of this is a polemic to do him justice, partly to explain why his account of early South Africa still shocks and discomfits, but mainly to show how he shaped new forms of discovery and adventure.’

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