The Ultimate Safari

A South African book which focuses specifically on journeys is The Ultimate Safari (2001). It is based upon a short story by Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, which is about a young girl who flees Mozambique with her family and walks through the Kruger National Park to a supposedly better life in South Africa. The writing is complemented by hand-printed lithographs drawn by Dorah Ngomane, Aletah Masuku and Alsetah Manthosi, who have all made the dangerous trek on foot to South Africa and who have recalled their journeys in print form (The Artists’ Press 2001).

Gordimer explains that the story was germinated during one of her visits to a refugee camp in the late 1980s with a BBC team interviewing refugees from Mozambique. Soon after, she read an advertisement in the London Observer, selling African adventure as the “ultimate safari”. Gordimer thought “what I’ve just seen is the ultimate safari” (Misra 2008).

With original hand-printed lithographs, signed by Masuku, Manthosi and Ngomane from a workshop facilitated by Tamar Mason and Paul Emmanuel in 1995. Hand-bound by Peter Carstens with a fabric slipcase.

Arts Print SA 2017 [o] Available: http://www.artprintsa.com/the-ultimate-safari.html