Manly Pursuits

Alternating between Oxford and Cape Town in the latter half of the 19th century, this is an extraordinary tale of the late-in-life adventures of a frail ornithologist. Professor Wills is cajoled from his sequestered life as a reclusive don in a quest to bring British birdsong to the slopes of Table Mountain and finds himself drawn into the eccentric antics and significant histories that surround a weakening colossus--Cecil Rhodes. Among the coteries of Rhodes' sharp blue- eyed young men, the author effortlessly slides better known fin-de-siècle figures such as Wilde, Kipling, Ruskin, Carrol, Jameson, Milner and Selous. With erotic undertones which remain teasingly suggestive, this delightful weaving of ornithology, history, biography and intrigue symbolically reveals Olive Schreiner amongst the undergrowth on Rhodes' mountain as the whisperer of the war and politics to come. The urgency of her pleas, so significant to us now, are viewed as shrill and hysterical in the discreet libraries of men more or less devoted to the imperialist mission. Ann Harries wittily develops the character of Wills from fearfully pedantic to naively (or omnisciently?) enchanted as his antiheroic hero is pleasurably conjured in his conflicts of conscience, loyalties, desire and power. --Oliver Phillips


Genre: Historical