The Lion
Joseph Kessel, Harper Johnson
Hardcover
(Alfred A Knopf, March 15, 1962)
"Patricia Bullit is a child of two worlds. In her trim navy-blue dress, studying her lessons and moving in her parents' world, she is an ordinary ten year old, with ordinary tastes and interests; in her faded dungarees, slipping silently and freely among the great beasts in unexplored, forbidden parts of a vast Kenya game preserve, she enters a world utterly foreign to any ordinary person. Her human friends are fue- proud, fearless Kihoro, long ago crippled by a savage rhinocerous; Bull, Bullit, her warden fater, once known throughout Africa as a great hunter; and the narrator, who is swiftly caught up in a tightening snare of conflicting loves. In the jungle Pat's friends are without number, and her greatest love is for King, the mighty and magnificent lion she raised from a helpless cub. Slowly at first, and with gathering speed and violence, her two worlds overlap more and more dangerously, and deeply moving drama of love and growing up is played to its terrific climax. Internationally hailed as great and timeless literature, here is the Lion in a stunning illustrated version, with line cuts and color tip-ins by Harper Johnson bringing Kessel's flawless prose to its fullest realization." This extract is taken from the first page of this book.