Peter Capstick's Africa: A Return To The Long Grass

by Peter Hathaway Capstick, Paul Kimble (Photographer), Richard van Niekerk (Photographer)

For the readers of hunting literature, the name of Peter Capstick is becoming synonymous with excitement, danger, and high adventure. Such highly successful titles as Death in the Long Grass, Death in the Silent Places, and Death in the Dark Continent have established him as the modern-day master of African adventure writing. Sportsman, adventurer, raconteur par excellence, Capstick has in many ways done for contemporary hunting literature what Hemingway and Robert Ruark did in decades past.

Until now, Capstick has written post facto about classic hunters of the past and safaris in which he participated as a professional hunter. Peter Capstick's Africa, however, is a very different breed of it is the enthralling tale of an entirely new safari, an exciting first-person adventure in which Peter Capstick returns to the long grass for his own dangerous and very personal excursion. The result is a definitive work on African hunting, and one of Peter Capstick's greatest achievements to date.

In 1985, Capstick went back into the African bush with two top photographers and a crack professional hunter, It was a venture taken for personal challenge, and for the chance to look anew at what had become of the Africa immortalized in his own earlier works. Peter Capstick's Africa is the chronicle, in text and pictures, of this safari. It is full of the same edge-of-the-seat narration, witty anecdotes, and wry observations that have made Capstick's earlier books so popular. But in addition, it tells the story of Africa today as Capstick sees a place that is in some ways the same as, but in many different from, the "dark continent" of even a few years ago. The text of the book has been integrated with the photographs of Paul Kimble and Dick van Niekerk into a lavish full-color production that illustrates Capstick's story in a way his fans have never seen before.

Peter Capstick's Africa is a book few lovers of travel and adventure will want to be without.

Genres: Nonfiction, Adventure, Africa

213 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 1987

About the author

Peter Hathaway Capstick was an American hunter and author. Born in New Jersey and educated at (although did not graduate from) the University of Virginia, he walked away from a successful Wall Street career shortly before his thirtieth birthday to become a professional hunter, first in Central and South America and later (and most famously) in Africa. Capstick spent much of his life in Africa, a land he called his "source of inspiration." A chain smoker and heavy drinker, he died at age 56 from complications following heart surgery.

Reviews

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

His stories are utterly amazing fascinating and exciting.

He left behind a white collar job, to become a big game hunter, game warden and a world-renown gun and hunting expert.

Some of his stories will make your hair stand on end!

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit more philosophical than most capstick books

As always an amazing author writing about amazing this in amazing places. This book seems a little more philosophical than his other books.

[Alex Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me this was an amazing trip into another world, into hunting on safari.

[Stu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sort of photo journal of Capstick's journey through the long grass is absolutely outstanding! I read it as a boy and still appreciate the immense quality of story today as an adult.