Meeting With a Great Beast: A Novel - Hardcover

Leonard Wibberley was born in Dublin Ireland, in 1915. He was the sixth child of a schoolteacher and an agricultural scientist. When he was nine, his family moved to London. Seven years later, when his father died, he went to work as a stockroom apprentice for a publisher and later became a reporter. After various jobs, he came to the United States in 1943 and engaged in newspaper work for ten years. While working for the Los Angeles Times, he published his first work, The King's Beard. Three years later he published his most successful book, The Mouse That Roared, which was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, and later made into a classic film starring Peter Sellers.

Wibberley lived in Hermosa Beach from 1949 until his death in 1983. He wrote over 100 books and 100's of newspaper articles. He was also an adventurer, who enjoyed traveling, scuba diving, ocean sailing, and road racing.

Leonard also wrote The Father Bredder Mystery Series under the pen name Leonard Holton.

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"A Wibberley novella--this time with none of the hokey whimsy of his lovable mice and men but with a direct projection of some of the territorial imperatives of the hunt and the primordial drives (instinct, survival, etc.) which are entailed."--Kirkus Review

"...Leonard Wibberley is one of the finest writers of fiction and non-fiction in the English-speaking world."--King Features Syndicate

"The moving story of a man's quest for understanding and acceptance of the fate he himself must face. As he stalks the great beast, it becomes the instrument of his understanding of which he must soon leave."--Goodreads Review

★★★★★ "On the surface, it is a straightforward story of one man's last hurrah--a safari deep into Africa, where, as he stalks an elusive and wily old elephant, while the cancer that is growing inside his body is also stalking him. Once you really get into this short tale--it is only 95 pages--you slowly realize that what he is stalking is not an elephant, no, that would be too simple. What he is stalking and seeking is the answer to the Big Question we all ask at some time in our lives: What does it all mean? Life, death, and how do I fit into this great, grand scheme? Leonard Wibberley delivers a masterful little tale that everyone will take something away from."--Amazon Review

"Beautifully, poetically wrought, this short novel echoes with a depth found in the best of fiction."--Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

"All that a reader might expect from this author is contained in this little allegory which stands with Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea--a modern, exciting story of heroic adventure that, like Melville's Moby Dick, contains the truths of living human selfishness and love."--Long Beach Press-Telegram