A characteristically unconventional and engaging work, Carmel Schrire’s Tigers in Africa: Stalking the Past at the Cape of Good Hope interweaves such diverse themes as colonial slavery and apartheid, human and carnivore evolution, and science and romance to show how we create the past and understand the present.

Schrire recounts the significance of the palaeontological findings of Raymond Dart, Robert Ardrey, and Glynn Isaac addressing a famous dispute about carnivore evolution that flourished in the heyday of apartheid. She sets pioneering exploration of the globe against archaeological surveys and romantic quests in the African desert and contrasts the dark days of colonial slavery at the Cape with the bright prospects of Nelson Mandela’s legacy there.