FLAMINGO FEATHER

Shaking off some of the muzziness of his previous novel The Face Beside The Fire ( 1953), van der Post settles down to a man hunt story which results in averting a tidal wave of destruction. Pierre de Beauvilliers hurries to search for John Sandysse when a messenger carrying a flamingo feather is killed; he heads for the great flamingo water, through jungle and mountain, pieces together the plan for a Soviet infiltration, and, in finding John, has the details filled in of the means by which Africa is to be ""liberated"". Working against time, de Beauvilliers makes his way to the tribal gathering of the Amangtakw where a great dream is to be declared and is able to give the chief proof of its falseness thereby preventing an organized revolution. The magnetic power of the country, the long line of neglect and dishonor suffered by the blacks, the ramifications of the evil use of the dream -- all work toward a melodramatic climax. For all its prolixity, a more centered, heightened story.