My Family and Other Animals - Softcover

Gerald Durrell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0670001309 ISBN 13: 9780670001309

Publisher: Viking Press, 1963

Synopsis

Book by Gerald Durrell

About this title

Review:

As a self-described "champion of small uglies," English writer Gerald Durrell (1925-1995) devoted his life to writing and the preservation of wildlife, from the Mauritius pink pigeon to the Rodriques fruit bat. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the Greek island of Corfu, but ended up as a delightful account of his family's experiences that were, according to him, "rather like living in one of the more flamboyant and slapstick comic operas."

As a 10-year-old boy, Gerry left England for Corfu with "all those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam-jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids." Durrell's descriptions of his family and its many eccentric hangers-on (he stresses that "all the anecdotes about the island and the islanders are absolutely true") are highly entertaining, as is the procession of toads, scorpions, geckos, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, the puppies Widdle and Puke, and the Magenpies. This is a lovely book.

About the Author:

Gerald Durrell was born in 1925 in India. His family eventually settled on the island of Corfu, where his interest in wildlife, a cause to which he would dedicate his life, first grew. He travelled extensively on zoological expeditions, and made over seventy television programmes on wildlife subjects. In 1982 he was awarded the OBE. Encouraged to write by his brother Lawrence, his first book, The Overloaded Ark (1953) became a bestseller, and he went on to write 36 other titles. He died in 1995.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Press
• Publication date: 1963
• ISBN 10: 0670001309
• ISBN 13: 9780670001309
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 273