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Madagascar: A World Out of Time by Frans Lanting, Alison Jolly and John
Mack, Robert Hale, pp 143, £22.95

Madagascar: A Natural History by Ken Preston-Mafham, Facts on File,
pp 224, $45

Madagascar is a biological treasure house, stocked with strange animals
and plants that are found nowhere else on Earth. Unfortunately, the people
of the ‘red island’ are grindingly poor – they have an annual income of
barely $210 per capita. Out of necessity they are forced to cut down their
forest, which is strung round the perimeter of the island ‘like a necklace
of pearls’. What is happening in Madagascar is, as some have observed is
‘a tragedy without villains’.

In Madagascar: A World Out of Time, Frans Lanting, a photographer from
the Netherlands, captures the wonder of this ‘vast experiment in alternative
evolution’ while simultaneously documenting the unfolding tragedy. There
have been books before that have provided a window on Madagascar, but never
one as breathtaking as this. Lanting’s extraordinary images of the country,
its landscapes, people and animals, have a haunting, ethereal quality.

The tone is set by the picture of an Antandroy tribesman on the book’s
cover. He stands erect, noble, fixing the camera with his stare. In one
hand he holds a spear and in the other, pressed against his chest, the enormous
white egg of the extinct Aepyornis, or elephant bird. In historical times,
these nightmarish birds, 2.5 metres tall and 300 kilograms in weight, thundered
across the plains of Madagascar. The egg held by the tribesman seems to
radiate light, giving the picture a mystical quality, common in Lanting’s
photographs.

In other dramatic images, Lanting captures the world’s smallest chameleon
(Brookesia peyrieresi), balanced on a thumbnail, and the massif of Ankarana,
‘an extraordinary landscape of limestone pinnacles, which if situated in
North America or Europe might be as well-known a landmark as Yosemite or
Stone Henge’.

However, the most sobering pictures in Lanting’s book are undoubtedly
those that show the catastrophic erosion on the central plateau of Madagascar.
Never have I seen such graphic illustration of the consequence of cutting
down trees. Brown hills march into the distance, scarred by deep gullies.
And through the devastated landscape flows a blood-red river, a great ruptured
artery, draining the nutrient-rich lifeblood of the land into the distant
sea.

The text of Madagascar: A World Out of Time, is written by two people
who know a lot about the country, Alison Jolly, a zool-ogist at Princeton
University, and John Mack, an anthropologist at the British Museum. But
interesting as their short essays are, it is the pictures that make this
book. I will remember them for a long time.

A related book is Madagascar: A Natural History, in which Ken Preston-Mafham
goes into rather more detail on the islands peculiar plant and animal life.
The pictures are less arresting than Lanting’s, but the text is far more
informative.