Season on the Plain

SEASON ON THE PLAINThis exciting book re-creates the dynamics of animal and plant life on an African plain. The setting, an island of vegetation in an equatorial wasteland, is a composite of several actual locales - a fictionalization that engobes grasses, trees, insects, birds, reptiles, microscopic organisms, and grazing and carnivorous animals as well as breeding and migration cycles, rain and drought, disease and age, all in a teeming network of complex interrelations. There are four main characters: a leopard forced out of his own territory, a baboon chased away from his troop, an aging lion, and a hyena with cubs to feed. "In such a world," writes the author, "nothing is what it seems...There are many clues, but the final secret always eludes the watcher in the audience. He may be certain of only one thing; triumphant life is distilled from death, and a new sense of Africa is lodged in his memory."