Nine Lives by John Varty

Memoirs of a Maverick Conservationist

224 pages, Paperback

Goodreads rating: 4.44 * 18 ratings * 2 reviews

Hunter, poet, musician, cameraman and game ranger, John Varty is South Africa's best-known - and most controversial - wildlife conservationist. He has been living and working in the wild since early childhood, when his passion for nature was ignited. Nine Lives is the fascinating tale of this magnetic figure's progression from hunter to filmmaker to conservationist. It is also the remarkable story of a lifelong affair with nature. In Nine Lives, Varty narrates the adventures, trials, mishaps and triumphs of his extraordinary life, from hunting lions at the age of twelve and teaching the orphaned lion cub Shingalana how to hunt for food, to spending last moments with the badly mauled Mother Leopard - whom he had been following and filming for years - before she crawled into a termite mound to die. He reveals the secrets behind his close relationships with certain big cats and invokes the terror of his own narrow escapes from death, including a dangerous encounter with crocodiles and a near-fatal helicopter crash. Captivating, often humorous and deeply moving, Nine Lives is a passionate account of a life lived to the full by a man driven by an intense love of the wild.