AFRICAN SAGA. Rocco family in Kenya. By Mirella Ricciardi

Collins, London, 1981 first edition, 300 pages illustrated throughout with black and white photographs. Soft cover in good condition. Name written in front; Koki mark. Carton attached to inside of back cover. Selotape marks in front and back. Under 1kg. 

The story of the multi-talented Rocco family in Kenya. Mirella Ricciardi, the internationally famous photographer, author of VANISHING AFRICA, has written one of the strangest stories of life and death to come out of Africa. In 1929 her father, an Italian wartime fighter pilot, and her mother, a French sculptress, built themselves an art deco palazzo on the shores of Lake Naivasha in Kenya. They put down their roots, farmed five thousand acres and raised their three children in an earthly paradise. In these vivid and sometimes startlingly honest pages the author describes the seven ages of Man lived against the cruel beauty of Africa. As a child she hunts barefoot with a Maasai warrior; her father is imprisoned and deported; her brother fights in the battle against the Mau Mau; she marries an Italian adventurer and falls in love with an African fisherman; she creates and best-selling book; her children grow up; her parents are attacked, survive, grow older and die. The Africa she knew as a child dies too - and in the final pages she watches a new one come to life. There have been no family stories quite like this one, and none illustrated with such a range of rare and evocative photographs. Family History. As a child she hunted with the Massai, her father was imprisoned & deported, her brother fought the Mau Mau. There have not been many accounts of family life in Africa quite like this one, and none illustrated with such a range of rare and evocative photographs.