There have been many accounts of the return to the wild of tame animals, but since its original publication in 1960, when the New York Times hailed it as
a "fascinating and remarkable book," Born Free has stood alone in its power to move us.
Joy Adamson's story of a lion cub in transition between the captivity in which she is raised and the fearsome wild to which she is returned captures the
abilities of both humans and animals to cross the seemingly unbridgeable gap between their radically different worlds. Especially now, at a time when the
sanctity of the wild and its inhabitants is increasingly threatened by human development and natural disaster, Adamson's remarkable tale is an idyll, and
a model, to return to again and again.
