Lords and Lemurs: Mad scientists, kings with spears and the survival of diversity in Madagascar by Alison Jolly, Houghton Mifflin, $25, ISBN 0618367519 Reviewed by Adrian Barnett
IN A time when travel is easy, with almost no exotic destination out of reach, Lords and Lemurs shows how much effort it takes to truly get under the skin of a country and its culture. A world-renowned authority on lemurs, biologist Alison Jolly has spent the best part of 40 years working in Madagascar. In a deft and sensitive book she takes us as close as outsiders are ever likely to get to the Malagash view.
Lords and Lemurs is a book about different tribes, their mores, expectations and futures. Here you’ll encounter: the indigenous Tandroy of southern Madagascar, with their zebu-centric lifestyle, and their mistrusted countrymen; the peoples of the plateau and coast; the science tribe who come to study the island’s biodiversity; the French tribe, expats who kept the faith with their adopted land; and, of course, the lemur tribes, whose females go into territorial battle with a baby clinging to their backs. This book also traces the swirl of politics from the French colonisation of the late 1800s to the rocky road from independence (schools with a single pencil – passed from student to student as each learned how to write), the ever increasing pressure on natural resources and, bounding through it all, the region’s unique lemurs.
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Filled with glorious characters such as King Tsihandatse the Not-Sarcastic, shipwrecked Robert Drury who became a Tandroy warrior-slave, Frightful Fan the psychotic lemur matriarch of one of Jolly’s study troops, this book is, above all, the story of the Le Heaulme family and of Berente, the fragment of thorn forest they preserved. Charting their history over five generations, Lords and Lemurs shows a family and people locked into a mutual dependency and trust that has transcended political turmoil to provide an archaic, but functioning, form of benevolent feudalism that benefits both people and wildlife.
Jolly is a wonderful writer, sensitive, evocative, with a fine eye for the telling detail and an acute ear for dialogue. As a social history of Madagascar, Lords and Lemurs is hard to beat and is sure to become a classic, a must for any visitor (armchair or otherwise).
