By Sue Derwent, with photos by Roger de la Harpe

There’s a photo on the first page of chapter nine of ‘KwaZulu-Natal; Adventures in Culture and Nature’ that I’m still trying to get my head around. It’s a picture of a tiny (no, tiny) crocodile basking on a lily leaf that’s floating between the lily’s flower and its (the flower’s) reflection.

What gets me is the expression on the little guy’s face … man… Attitude!

And it is, I think, a pretty fine summary of that troublesome province.

There’s menace there, and immense tenderness. There’s violence, and incredible beauty. And this book is a fine introduction to some of those things – although without the nasty underbelly: this is, after all, a tourist memento, and who on holiday wants to know that everything isn’t just peachy?

‘KwaZulu-Natal; Adventures in Culture and Nature’ neatly packages the people, their creativity, their faiths (I skipped over that bit), their games, and their food and drink with the environment: the ocean, the nature reserves and the two magnificent world heritage sites that are the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, and the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park.

I did actually read the book, but I’m not sure that I remember any of the words, because I spent so much of my time lost in the photographs – the little crocodile, of course, being just one of them. And, even though this is no show-off, coffee table piece (it’s soft covered, 250 x 210 mm, and 144 pages in length), the photos really made me want to visit KwaZulu-Natal all over again.

And for that reason alone, it definitely belongs in your guest library.

Get it here (where it’s R 176.00 – although the publisher’s recommended price is R 220.00).

Martin Hatchuel.