The Impossible Five: South Africa's Most Elusive Mammals

by Justin Fox

Visiting Africa's game reserves is often all about spotting 'The Big Five' - the five most dangerous animals on the continent - the Lion, the Leopard, the Elephant, the Rhino and the Buffalo. But what about those animals you have almost zero chance of seeing? Justin Fox drew up a list of the most elusive animals and set off to find 'The Impossible Five' - the Cape Mountain Leopard, the Aardvark, the Pangolin, the Riverine Rabbit and the Naturally Occurring White Lion.
In a humorous, original, off-beat adventure story, Justin travels around Africa in search of these forgotten animals. Along the way he meets some very weird characters, and other absurd mammals.

160 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 1, 2017

About the author

Fox is a novelist, travel writer and photographer based in Cape Town, South Africa, and is the former editor of Getaway travel magazine. He was a Rhodes Scholar and received a doctorate in English literature from Oxford University after which he was a research fellow at the University of Cape Town, where he taught part time for 20 years. His articles and photographs have appeared internationally in a number of publications and on a wide range of topics, while his short stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies. He has written scripts and directed award-winning documentaries and is a two-time Mondi journalism award winner (1999 and 2004). Recent books include The Marginal Safari (Umuzi), The Impossible Five (Tafelberg), Beat Routes (Karavan), Place (Umuzi) and, most recently, a World War II series of novels, starting with The Cape Raider (Penguin and Sapere) and The Wolf Hunt (Sapere). Justin was longlisted for the 2011 Alan Paton Award for non-fiction, the 2012 Olive Schreiner Prize for Literature, and his debut novel, Whoever Fears the Sea (Umuzi 2014), was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize for African literature.