Book Review: The Man-Eaters of Tsavo by John Henry Patterson

 

Wow, two I read two nonfiction books about a white guy in Africa killing shit in a row. Some achievement. 

Unlike the rather-similar Akeley book I reviewed earlier, this one I got into reading because of the titular man-eating lions that terrorized the Tsavo region in the late 1800s. Like In Brightest Africa, this book is public domain so getting it was easy and free. Otherwise I really don't care for this genre of hunting stories. 

So, yeah, like with Akeley's book, this review (and the book itself) contains mentions of animal death, human death and racism. Yippee (that's sarcasm).

So like I said before, I mainly picked up this book because A) it's free and B) I could read a firsthand account about the goings-ons in Kenya back when two maneless lions were active killing people during the building of a bridge. Supposedly, 100+ people died at the fangs and claws of these lions. Our author, John Henry Patterson, is tasked with setting up traps in hopes of killing the culprits.

That's what I thought this book was about. Turns out, those events only take up about the first 5-10 chapters. From then on it becomes rather similar to Akeley's In Brightest Africa: just some dude killing animals. 

And I'll at least give Akeley some minute credit with that he was mostly hunting stuff for the sake of bringing it home to be taxidermied as educational material. Not saying that's the most noble cause, but at least he was hunting with some bigger goal. 

Patterson? Outside of the Tsavo lions, which had to be killed out of necessity, most of the time he's just hunting for the sake of it. Whatever is done with the body afterwards seems to be more of an afterthought. Sometimes they eat it or skin it but I don't recall this happening even that many times. 

And even the Tsavo chapters, the part that made me want to read about this book in the first place, were dull as all hell. I don't know how it's possible to make two man-eating lions that have supposedly killed over 100 people sound boring, but it he did manage exactly that. And not only that, Pattersons entire writing voice is incredibly, incredibly dull. 

Again, Akeley's book was full of problems and I don't recommend it in the slightest, but at least he had a pleasant (overall, with some hiccups) writing voice that kept the reader engaged. I honestly wanted to put down Patterson's book after only two chapters because he didn't make anything sound remotely interesting. There's no life to the way he writes, it just feels dull.

And, here's the obvious elephant in the room again: Late 1800s White Man in Africa Racism! Akeley did it, and Patterson sure as hell did as well. While I guess variations of the N-word were used here less so than in Akeley's book, that doesn't make Patterson any less racist. Some of the later post-Tsavo chapters contain his views on the various indigenous tribes of the region, and the picture he paints of most of them is...less than flattering to say the least. Very much written like a privileged biased white man. He frequently calls them stuff like savages and ugly (not even individual people, just entire local tribes). Heck, he's even intolerant towards the religions of the coolies (Indian people he works with), such as when one of them refuses to eat a certain meat because he's a Muslim, which causes Patterson to be horribly annoyed. How hard is it not to be a bigoted intolerant prick for these white men in Africa? Sheesh. 

So, yeah, absolutely skip this one. I've compared it to Akeley's book often since they're both published in the early 1900s and both detail white men in Africa killing a bunch of animals. Akeley's book I cannot recommend, either, don't worry, but at the very least he had an interesting writing voice and some sort of philosophy about respect for nature, albeit a skewed one. And he had some interesting introductory chapters about the artform of taxidermy. Patteron's book felt like one boring depressing slog, it just has nothing going for it, really. 

If you do want to learn about the Tsavo Man-eaters like I initially did, I recommend a documentary called The Man-Eaters of Tsavo (so same title as the book). I think I'll not read another book of this genre again because both Akeley's and Patterson's books left such an awful taste in my mouth.

Rating: 1/5