Product Description

Most of Jim Corbett's books contain collections of stories that recount adventures tracking and shooting man-eaters in the Indian Himalaya. This volume, however, consists of a single story, often considered the most exciting of all Corbett's jungle tales. He gives a carefully-detailed account of a notorious leopard that terrorized life in the hills of the colonial United Provinces. This story represents Corbett's most sustained and unique effort.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #156709 in Books
• Published on: 1989-03-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

About the Author

About the Author:
Jim Corbett was a renowned hunter.

Customer Reviews

Adventures dont get better than this.
Corbett is a natural writer and combines his knowledge of the jungle with uncanny hunting skills to give us one of the best Indian adventures ever written.

Reading his books is not just following a maneater with a gun - it is a journey into the days of the British Raj where you will be transported into the remote jungles of Northern India, read about the simple people and their unsophisticated lifestyle. There are no villians, no suspicious characters lurking around and nobody to provide humour. You just have village folk trying to eke out a living which is sometimes interrupted by a feline with a taste for humans.

This particular book is about one leopard which terrorised a large region for many years and claimed about 420 lives. To understand what these people must have felt, it must be noted that in those days there were no high security fences, no guns or any kind of technology to track the leopard. Yet the people had to enter the forest to earn their daily bread. There is an unforgettable chapter in the book titled 'Terror' which starts something like this:

'During the day, people went about their lives as usual. Trade and commerce, transport and all other transactions went about their normal way. But as evening approached, there was a marked change in their behaviour. Pilgrims rushed towards their night shelters, businessmen closed shops abruptly and people scurried towards their homes for relative safety. No curfew was more strictly imposed. No orders to remain indoors were observed as faithfully.'

This is one of the books which shows that for writing adventure you don't need weapons or FBI investigations. All you need is a writer with a big heart who loves what he is doing and knows what he is talking about.

A timeless classic!
My brother had borrowed this book from the local British Library, and I started reading it casually, without any real interest in reading it fully. As I write this now after just having put the book down, I can assert that this is one heck of a story, narrated in a manner that is hugely engaging -- This is simply among the best books to be found anywhere.

The book was first published in 1947, and you'd expect it to be a little "dated" in its content and style, but nothing could be farther from the truth. I have acquired a newfound respect for Jim Corbett the author, and believe that his legendary stature as the fearless slayer of man-eating tigers (and leopards) almost unfairly overshadows his other qualities evidenced in this book. In an era when being a trigger-happy jungle "sportsman" was probably fashionable, Corbett comes out as a brave but reluctant hunter with deep respect for the wild, whose primary motive is clearly to prevent further loss of innocent human lives.

Being from India, it was also very heartening for me to read how well he connected with the native populace of that period, and the genuine respect and admiration which he holds for many of the Indian characters in his story. This is especially remarkable considering that this was the time of British rule in India, and much (not all) British literature from that period is at best condescending in mentioning the native population.

A gem of a book
One of my best childhood memories is of my father telling my brother and me stories from Jim Corbett's books. I recall that we were held spellbound by the tales, never quite knowing how they might unfold until we reached the end.

Many years later I have rediscovered Jim Corbett's books, and find them even more captivating. They are not trashy blood-thirsty tales. Instead, they retell the experiences of a real man who faced danger to protect others, and who had a deep respect for nature and the animal he was hunting. Jim Corbett's ability to describe his situation is so keen, the events are absolutely vivid for the reader. I thank Jim Corbett for the pleasure he has given my father, my brother, and now also my young sons.