Charismatic Cat

Peppered with stunning illustrations, Caracal: An Intimate History of a Mysterious Cat is a deeply moving and meticulously researched account of the elusive felid

- Stephen Alter

CARACAL: An Intimate History of a Mysterious Cat

by Dharmendra Khandal and Ishan Dhar

TIGER WATCH

₹3,850; 339 pages

Plenty of coffee table books have been published on tigers, so it's a pleasant change to have a lavishly illustrated volume dedicated to a lesser-known creature. The caracal is one of the most widely distributed felids on earth, ranging from Africa through the Middle East and further on into South Asia, but it is also the most elusive of cats. Dharmendra Khandal and Ishan Dhar have produced an exhaustive and passionate tribute to a species that is seldom seen yet captures the imagination of every naturalist. Commonly known as the siyahgosh, which means black ears in Farsi, this secretive creature has an evolutionary history that is eight million years older than man.