The Overloaded Ark
Gerald Durrell, director and owner of Jersey Zoo, was internationally famous for his amusing books about collecting wild animals. The Overloaded Ark , his first, remains his funniest book. It describes an expedition to the remote territory of the Cameroons in West Africa, before independence.'A delightful book . . . You can feel his bush-shirt sticking to his back . . . Bagging a monitor, smoking out a Pangolin (scaly anteater), celebrating the capture of the rare Angwantibo (small lemur), bird liming for Giant Kingfishers on the warm, milky waters of Lake Soden: he communicates every detail of his experiences with just the right degree of zest.' New Statesman