Black Lion: Alive in the Wilderness

Black Lion is a powerful and honest account of one man's spiritual journey in the wilderness, exploring his relationship with nature and its impact on his emotional and spiritual survival.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 07 July 2022
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers SA

Black Lion is a powerful, propulsive, and unflinchingly honest account of one man's remarkable spiritual journey. It is life-affirming and deepening, and a vital contribution to the discourse around conservation.

JINI REDDY, author of Wanderland, writes: "A brave account of a natural disaster, and of achieving reconciliation with the predatoriness of life."

Richard Mabey, on Mbatha's Essay "Letting Go," says: "Wilderness guide Sicelo Mbatha shares lessons learnt from a lifetime's intimate association with Africa's wildest nature."

Black Lion begins in rural South Africa, where a deeply traumatic childhood experience - a cousin being dragged away by a crocodile - should have turned him against the surrounding wilderness. Instead, he was irresistibly drawn to it.

As a volunteer at Imfolozi Nature Reserve, close encounters with animals taught him to see with his heart and thus began a spiritual awakening. Drawing from his Zulu culture and a yearning to better understand human's relationship to nature, Sicelo has forged a new path to nature with an immersive, respectful, and transformative way of being in the wilderness.

As humanity hurtles into the anthropogenic 21st century, Black Lion is an urgent reminder of how much we need wilderness for our emotional and spiritual survival.

Weight: 250g
Dimension: 198 x 129 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781776191871