Tommy Goes Home - The Epic Journey of a Family and Their Lion from Germany, Through War Torn Angola to Freedom by Peter Stiff
Tommy Goes Home - The Epic Journey of a Family and Their Lion from Germany, Through War Torn Angola to Freedom by Peter Stiff
Hardcover, ISBN 9780797402799
Publisher: Jacaranda Press, 1977 first edition.
Condition: Very Good+. This book is in an excellent condition. The DJ has some very slight signs of wear and the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains perfect. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. The book is protected with a Cellophane cover.
Take Manfred Forster, his wife Karen, their teenage sons Frank and Uwe and their 8-year-old daughter Gabriella and load them together with dogs, parrots, assorted livestock and a half-grown lion called Tommy into a Land-Rover with 100 000 km on the clock and convoy it with a beaten up old Volksie. Send them overland from Germany, through Belgium, France, Spain, Angola, Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, just as Portugal erupts into a military and civil rebellion and its colony, Angola is being wrenched apart by tribal and Marxist private armies scrambling for the spoils of their late Colonial masters you then have the essence of Peter Stiffs fantastic book. In Angola the Forsters battled with aching muscles, blocks and tackles, power saws and faltering vehicles about to give up the ghost, through swamp, forest, savannah grasslands and endless bushveld. They were beset by near starvation, fever and the threat of sudden and horrible death at the hands of instant black soldiers some as young as 12 or 13. They were dressed in rags, but armed with modern Soviet and Red Chinese weaponry which they were eager to blood. The intense tropical heat was such that even Tommy nearly died. On one occasion Manfred spurned the offer of a Kings ransom in diamonds to stay and fight as a mercenary commander but no amount of diamonds was worth the lives of his family. Throughout their amazing journey one incredible continuous thread is apparent. Without Tommy the lion as their constant companion, friend and guardian none of the Forster family would have survived to tell this story but survive they did. This is not just another animal story. It is an incredible and remarkable animal story and of a familys love for a lion and it is also a family story full of love, laughter and pathos. It tells a story of a civil war and pulls back a corner of the communist blanket which eventually covered the bushveld, towns and villages of Angola. This was to show the agony of ordinary people when they are drawn willy-nilly into the maelstrom of civil war and beset by the wolves of anarchy. What is written in this book is true it all happened.
