THE YEAR OF THE LEOPARD SONG

BY ERIC CAMPBELL

Macmillan, Rs 313

Does magic still exist? Some might scorn and say ‘No,’ but some might rigidly acknowledge its presence. Magic can be divine and beautiful, yet equally scary and brutal as proved by Eric Campbell’s The Year Of The Leopard Song.

The story is about two young lads. They are almost like brothers, but immensely unlike each other. One is an English Native – Alan Edwards, settled with his family near the foot of the Mountain Peak Kilimanjaro in Africa and the other is an African Native – Kimathi, a Chagga Warrior Tribal. Through their eighteen years of friendship, they have flanked the most dangerous areas of Mount Kilimanjaro risking their own routes, nevertheless, enjoying thoroughly.

The novel starts when Alan is delighted to be back at his African farm after a dull year at his school in England. He has missed Africa’s warmth, the peaceful greenery, his loving parents, his African house helper – Njombo, but most, his best friend – Kimathi.

However, soon his delight turns into suspicions as weird things commence. The first mark – CHUI (meaning ‘leopard’ in Swahili) impressed in blood inside his shed, shocks him, but he continues with his enquiries. His own African people evade him, even Njombo. Next, his buddy, Kimathi, suddenly disappears. Alan believes that either Kimathi is in grave danger, else seeking a solution to their local African problem in the quiet recesses of Kilimanjaro.

A cautious warning asks his father to take Alan away to a safer place. Nevertheless, Alan resolves to unravel the mystery and save his brotherly friend Kimathi. His clues lead him to the perilous yet equally enchanting snows of Kilima Njaro.

To make matters worse, the highest slope of Mount Kilimanjaro, where no animal has yet survived, recites the leopard song and miraculously houses a malicious leopard. The song captures Alan in a trance and lures him towards the blood thirsty leopard. Does Alan survive a fatal death? What becomes of Kimathi? The answers lie in this thrilling novel, The Year Of The Leopard Song with every page tightly gripping the reader until the end.

We are also acquainted by Campbell to people like Inspector Makayowe. He is an African Policeman, who does not believe in magic, but only believes in upholding his power. He is also termed as a ‘black man in a white mask’ by orthodox Africans. However, even his loyalties are tested at a crucial point in the novel, and for once; he does seem weakened by magic.

The book enriches the African Magic possessed by the Chagga Warrior Tribe. In fact, the mysterious rituals they follow and their secret legends sometimes have bloodcurdling effects. To understand African stories, a single reading is highly insufficient. The author lures you in the story, makes you feel the song and almost binds you with its magic. The novel loudly proclaims that magic can influence and overpower you.

Eric Campbell has beautifully described Africa and its snow-clad peaks, yet also emphasized the scary vastness of the huge continent.

Campbell, also the author of The Place of Lions, The Shark Callers and Elephant Gold, bases The Year Of The Leopard Song on a factual photograph. This photograph, dated 1920s, demonstrates a frozen corpse of a leopard at a very high peak, henceforth labelled, the Leopard Point. The 19,710 feet high Kilimanjaro’s western summit is named Ngaje Ngai by the Maasai. It is the House of God of Kilimanjaro.

No one knows why the leopard had gone there, where no animal had yet survived unaided. It looks like as John Reader says in his Kilimanjaro,

“Like a sacrifice to the superior force of the mountain.”