Description
For hundreds of years the vast territory of the Kalahari remained a blank on the map. Yet it gripped the imagination of poets, painters, writers, dreamers, adventurers and not a few charlatans. This book is a whimsical anthology of those who were inspired by this desert, those who lived in its bitter confines and those who died in its dry embrace.
Read about the travelers to Lake Ngami – Livingstone, William Cornwallis Harris, Anderssen the Swede and Frederick Lugard. Follow in the footsteps of the hunters – James Chapman, Jan Viljoen, Fred and Hal Barber. Shed a tear for the calamitous Dorsland Trek. Learn the truth about the Lost City; how Cecil Rhodes established a white settlement at Ghanzi and how a professor planned to divert mighty rivers to flood the desert. Meet the Robin Hood of the Desert and learn why Laurens van der Post’s biographer called him the “master fabricator”.