African Silences
African Silences is a 1991 book by Peter Matthiessen published by Random House.It recounts journeys through Equatorial Africa to study the situation of elephants and other wildlife and is a meditation upon the natural world and mankind's relationship to it and effect upon it.One element of slight optimism amongst the rather despairing reports of the 'silencing' of nature (which has an echo of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring) is the discussion of moves for an international ban on the ivory trade, which Matthiessen thought were influenced by the study conducted by him in collaboration with the ecologist David Western regarding the population of the forest elephant.[3] The book also has a political subtext, since Matthiessen also commented on the brutality of certain governments in the region, as well as discussing the environment and the natural world.Certain human groups are described in far more glowing terms, such as the Mbuti pygmies in the Ituri Forest.