Colors of Africa (Brown Thrasher Books)

When James Kilgo is invited on an African safari, he leaps at the opportunity--even though the only shooting he is slated for is with a camera. As the group's photographer and "intoxicated by sensation," Kilgo not only documents the hunt, but also relays every sight, sound, and scent of the long trek through Zambia's Luangwa River valley.

The expedition is made all the more significant because Kilgo has cancer, and his lifelong dream is to travel to the great continent with "the sound of life." A retired University of Georgia English professor and former hunter, Kilgo's expectations of the trip are heavily influenced by the literary tradition of big-game adventurers Ernest Hemingway, Isak Dinesen, David Livingstone, and Theodore Roosevelt. Kilgo's sometimes-religious account echoes Livingstone's: "The mere animal pleasure of traveling in a wild unexplored country is very great," he writes.

Kilgo, an avid bird watcher, offers exhaustive descriptions of the many avian species he and the hunting party encounter. He sets aside his status as observer, however, when given the chance to shoot kudu, a type of woodland antelope that Hemingway also pursued and depicted in Green Hills of Africa. Kilgo soon realizes that while the experience of hunting in Africa is much the same as it was in Hemingway's day, Africa has changed greatly. Outside of the bush country where the party hunts, there is "poverty, AIDS, and genocide." But for Kilgo it is the beauty of Africa that resonates, as it is a place where the sky changes moment to moment, and the leaves and the flowers fade and fall: "Only the colors of the earth remain constant--black and white, sienna, ochre, and umber." --C.J. Carrillo