Monday, March 24, 2008



The Circle of Life
We recently published a book : "The Circle of life: Wildlife on the African Savannah"



Here are some reviews:

(From Publishers Weekly)

Anup and Manoj Shah, who grew up in Kenya, have made their lives' work photographing the wildlife of the Serengeti-Maasai Mara and the Ngorongoro Crater regions in Kenya and Tanzania. The photos gathered in this generous coffee-table book have appeared in National Geographic and National History, among other magazines. Nature is frozen in its most dramatic moments here: a hyena carries off a dismembered giraffe leg in a light so vivid that one can almost feel the grizzled, torn tendons; lions roar in the act of copulation in a blur that captures the fleeting moment; a martial eagle crouches over a bloody bit of fawn in a photo with startlingly beautiful, painterly colors. The landscape is alive in a photo of two lions watching a coming storm; a spotted hyena, face soaked in blood, pauses and we see the depths of its eyes. Readers get anthropomorphized wildlife ("Females, it seems, are the shoppers, and males are the sellers") on a regular basis thanks to Animal Planet-not exactly original commentary, but the pictures are awe-inspiring nonetheless. Organized by chapters like "Herds and Social Groups," "Grazers and Browsers" and "Light and Energy" with brief text introductions, the book emphasizes the seasonality and intricate diversity of the Savannah. The authors highlight the delicate interdependence of life forms, with a chapter called "Scavengers and Decomposers," and the images themselves argue for the preservation of this vital wilderness. 235 full-color illustrations.



(From Booklist)
These extraordinary photographs by two brothers, Anup and Manoj Shah, take the reader on a spectacular journey into the heart of the African savannah, concentrating on the Serengeti-Maasai Mara and Ngorongoro Crater regions in Kenya and Tanzania. The Shah brothers' breathtaking images chronicle life and death in one of the most fascinating and complex eco-systems in the world, a place left largely untouched by man. Here lions, giraffes, elephants, zebras, cheetahs, hippos, hyenas, baboons, wildebeests, and thousands of other species give birth, play, hunt, feed, groom, sleep, mate, migrate, and die in the dramatic scenes played out on these pages.Anup Shah's text complements the images, starting with the most basic elements necessary for life on the savannah and gradually building up to the intricate, dynamic interactions between the plants and animals in the food chain and their environment. Every aspect of daily life is touched on: evolution and natural selection, sex and mating rituals, birth and motherhood, staying alive and getting along, predators and prey, herds and social groups. In the final chapters the reader discovers that in death all living things return to the soil, where it all began, thus completing the circle of life.