Aminatta Forna was born in Scotland, raised in Sierra Leone and Great Britain and spent periods of her childhood in Iran, Thailand and Zambia. She is the award-winning author of the novels Happiness, The Hired Man, The Memory of Love, and Ancestor Stones, and a memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water.One of her six best books about animals and humans, as shared at the Guardian:
A pack of wolves follows a sled, picking off the sled dogs and then the occupants one by one, to the last man. So begins Jack London’s White Fang, published in 1906. The wolf pack is led by a wolfdog, Kiche. The ensuing story is told from the viewpoint ofRead about another entry on the list.Kiche’s wolf pup, White Fang, through whose gaze we view the violence of the parallel worlds of animals and humans. White Fang is the narrative mirror of London’s earlier The Call of the Wild, in which a pet dog, kidnapped and used as a sled dog, runs away to join the wolves. Wildness is the true nature of animals, though the challenges of survival in the wilderness can also turn man into a beast, London seems to say. White Fang ends up enjoying domesticity with his new master, many miles away from the Yukon. Humans have triumphed over nature, but nature is still out there.
White Fang is among Brian Payton's top ten books about Alaska, Amy Wilkinson's top seven books with "white" in the title, Emma Barnes's top ten books with wolves, and Marcus Sedgwick's top ten books from cold climes.
--Marshal Zeringue
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