African Silences

“… In the winter of 1978 he made his first visit to West Africa, accompanying primatologist Gilbert Boese on a wildlife survey of Senegal, Gambia, and the Ivory Coast. He continued eastward to Zaire in search of the rare Congo peacock. In early 1986 he returned to Central Africa with ecologist David Western, who was attempting to determine the status of the small forest elephant in the Congo Basin.
These are the expeditions that Matthiessen traces in African Silences. It is a lyrical and sobering account, a portrait of vanishing worlds and what is replacing them. …”