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Gerald Durrell is among the best-selling authors in English. His adventurous spirit and his spontaneous gift for narrative and anecdote stand out in his accounts of expeditions in Africa and South America in search of rare animals. He divines the characters of these creatures with the same clear, humorous and unsentimental eyes with which he regards those chance human acquaintances whose conversation in remote places he often reproduces in all its devastating and garbled originality. To have maintained, for over fifteen years, such unfailing standards of entertainment can only be described as a triumph. The Argentine pampas and the little-known Chaco territory of Paraguay provide the setting for The Drunken Forest. With Durrell for interpreter, an orange armadillo or a horned toad, or a crab-eating raccoon suddenly discovers the ability not merely to set you laughing but also to endear itself to you. 'His sympathy with the animal world encourages the Disney in every creature to show itself' "Time And Tide"… (more)
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Durrell possesses
Later in his life, Durrell became unhappy with the conditions in which many animals live in zoos (although the zoo he founded bears his name since his death) and he turned efforts toward conservation. When I felt uncomfortable with the methods of capture or other treatment of his acquisitions, I remind myself standards have changed and this is not the book he would have written in later years. This applies, too, to some of the descriptions of individuals he met, particularly non Europeans.
This is a wonderful, charming book. Give it a shot.
The book is a bit dated, but it is so fun to read of his madcap adventures collecting animals in the wild, (in South america, in this case.)
I loved the humor, and managed to learn a bit about animals as
These memoirs are filled with delightful humour and interesting tales of their adventures. It was wonderful to read with my smartphone nearby so I could look up the images and sounds of the various species, but even if I didn't have any technology to do this, the illustrations in the book by Ralph Thompson are accurate and lovely. Durrell writes in such a way as to transport you to the place he is; very descriptive, catching the joy, the pathos and the very essence of what he sees around him.