The Healing Land: The Bushmen and the Kalahari Desert - Softcover

Isaacson, Rupert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802140513 ISBN 13: 9780802140517

Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004

Synopsis

The Healing Land Brought up on stories and myths of the Kalahari Bushmen, Rupert Isaacson journeys to the dry vast grassland -- which stretches across South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia -- to find out the truth behind these childhood stories. Deep in the Kalahari, Isaacson meets the last groups of Bushmen still living the traditional way, caught between their ancient culture and the growing need to protect and re Full description

About this title

Review:

"Isaacson provides a welcome update...with his unflinching portrait of a people riven by government relocation, alcoholism, and domestic violence. Yet he remains awed by the Bushmen's enduring connection to the earth, and guardedly optimistic about their future."

From the Back Cover:

Brought up on family stories about the bushmen of the Kalahari, Rupert Isaacson journeys to this dry vast grassland – which stretches across South Africa, Botswana and Namibia – to find out the truth behind these childhood myths. Deep in the arid heartland, Isaacson meets the last groups of Bushmen still living the traditional way, caught between their ancient culture and the growing need to protect and reclaim their dwindling hunting grounds. Little by little he is drawn into the fascinating web of ritual and prophecy that make up the Bushman reality, until at last he is sent in search of Besa, a powerful healer and shape-shifter. what follows is an adventure of an intensity he could never have predicted.

Part travel writing, part history of the Bushmen, part personal quest, The Healing Land records what Isaacson finds these silent, empty spaces: the trance dance he attends, the wildlife he hunts, the wild plants he helps gather, the characters, corruption, kindness and confusion of a people who have wrenched themselves from the Stone Age into the new millennium.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0802140513
• ISBN 13: 9780802140517
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 278