Dan Wylie - Böcker

Over the decades we have heard a great deal about Shaka, the most famous—or infamous—of Zulu leaders. It may come as a surprise, therefore, that we do not know when he was born, nor what he looked like, nor precisely when or why he was assassinated. In Shaka's case, even these most basic facts of any person's biography remain locked in obscurity.Meanwhile the public image, sometimes monstrous, sometimes heroic, juggernauts on—truly a "myth of iron" that is so intriguing, so dramatic, so archetypal, and sometimes so politically useful, that few have subjected it to proper scrutiny.Myth of Iron: Shaka in History is the first book-length scholarly study of Shaka to be published. It lays out, as far as possible, all the available evidence—mainly hitherto underutilized Zulu oral testimonies, supported by other documentary sources—and decides, item by item, legend by legend, what exactly we can know about Shaka's reign. The picture that emerges in this meticulously researched and absorbing "anti-biography" is very different from the popular narrative we are used to.

We all picture Shaka as a lean, mean, assegai-wielding warrior-king, the military genius who founded the Zulu nation. In fact, we don't actually know when he was born, what he looked like, or exactly when he died. Almost every other story you've heard is probably either wrong or contested. This biography draws on the last two decades of historical research to reassess the eyewitness accounts and use newly available oral traditions. The picture that emerges is astonishingly different from the popular stereotype.

Traces the literary history of the elephant, and its role in South Africa's cultural imaginaryElephants are in dire straits – again. They were virtually extirpated from much of Africa by European hunters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but their numbers resurged for a while in the heyday of late-colonial conservation efforts in the twentieth. Now, according to one estimate, an elephant is being killed every 15 minutes. This is at the same time that the reasons for being especially compassionate and protective towards elephants are now so well-known that they have become almost a cliché: their high intelligence, rich emotional lives including a capacity for mourning, caring matriarchal societal structures, that strangely charismatic grace. Saving elephants is one of the iconic conservation struggles of our time.As a society we must aspire to understand how and why people develop compassion – or fail to do so – and what stories we tell ourselves about animals that reveal the relationship between ourselves and animals. This book is the first study to probe the primary features, and possible effects, of some major literary genres as they pertain to elephants south of the Zambezi over three centuries: indigenous forms, early European travelogues, hunting accounts, novels, game ranger memoirs, scientists' accounts, and poems. It examines what these literatures imply about the various and diverse attitudes towards elephants, about who shows compassion towards them, in what ways and why. It is the story of a developing contestation between death and compassion, between those who kill and those who love and protect.

The image of the elephant can be found throughout world religions and cultures as a symbol of intelligence, strength and loyalty. In this book Daniel Wylie draws on a rich array of cultural examples to document that symbolic power, ranging from religious iconography for the Hindu god of wisdom, Ganesh, to beloved children’s works such as Dumbo, Babar the Elephant and Horton Hears a Who!. Elephant also considers the recurrent role of the animal in myths, paintings and sculptures.The book also describes the elephant’s three remaining species, and the controversial international efforts for elephant conservation. With ivory poaching and human encroachment into the animal’s natural habitats, Wylie argues that we face a uniquely poignant conservation crisis.