Similarly, the two most engrossing nature books of the year have a melancholic, nostalgic tinge. One is written by Lamorna Ash, "who can gut most kinds of fish, slowly". Dark, Salt, Clear chronicles the decline of fishing in Cornwall, with her emphasis on culture and communities as much as commerce. The other is an account of a year in an Irish garden by a justly renowned novelist. Niall Williams' In Kiltumper is suffused by worries about storms, family illness, intrusive wind turbines and thin soil.

Cry of the Kalahari is separated in both space and time from those concerns. Published 37 years ago, the story chronicles events which began in 1974. Instead of mourning barren landscapes or ravaged oceans, the twin narrators, a married couple, wend their way to "one of the last and largest" pristine wildernesses. Rather than fretting about humans' carbon or garbage footprint, they lived for seven years without electricity, radio, roads, medical facilities, reliable water or established shelter.

That refuge was the "Great Thirst" in Botswana's central Kalahari Desert, an area larger than Ireland. Botswana's Okavango delta is far more celebrated, but altogether more hospitable. The couple arrived with no maps, no guide, one change of clothes each and only 15 gallons of water. There the Owens researched how the local wild animals coped and co-operated, scrutinising species which had never been shot, trapped, hunted or snared.

This re-issue may gain attention partly because one of the scientists, Delia Owens, recently published (in 2018) Where the Crawdads Sing. That poignant, remarkably popular novel is set in marshes and a swamp in North Carolina, locations as abundant in water as the Kalahari is arid. Delia Owens and her husband, though, deserve to have this story judged on its merits. Those are considerable.

Like Jane Goodall with her chimpanzees and Dian Fossey with gorillas in the mist, the Owens tried hard to reach the point where they were simply accepted by the animals they were studying. In "an ancient fossilised river valley meandering through forested sand dunes", they set out to immerse themselves in the habitat. In doing so, they crawled up close to ferociously wild animals, slept surrounded by packs, gave pet names to their subjects and lived in harmony in a world which belonged to the animal kingdom rather than them.

As always seems to happen, the lions snaffled the classiest names. They were nicknamed "Moffet", "Bimbo", "Bones" and "Starbuck" while a hyena had to put up with "Bandit" and a cheetah was designated "The Pink Panther".

In their take on the world, both Owens would likely commend the declaration about "other nations" of animals contained in a wonderful nature book published 93 years ago, Henry Beston's The Outermost House. "We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals." They exist "gifted with the extension of senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear".

On their first morning in the desert, the Owens awoke to a dove cooing, a jackal wailing, a lion bellowing and a kestrel hovering. Where others might have been disconcerted, the scientists felt themselves at home. "We had found our Eden."

That scene, like all which follow, is recounted in an elegant, direct and simple style. Simplicity is not over-done. Mark Owens displays exceptional focus throughout, nowhere more so than in his account of a cheetah loping: "a union of speed, co-ordination, balance and form".

The Owens study intently two prides of lions, but not as an exclusive interest. They are more broad-church in their research subjects than were George and Joy Adamson, who attempted to return a lion cub to the wild (and then documented the process in Born Free). The Owens' feats were more formidable.

Abandoned in the middle of nowhere, with minimal financial or technical resources, they were obliged to conduct research of sufficient novelty and quality to gain a grant to enable them to keep on working in the desert. Not even Robyn Davidson in Tracks operated with so small a margin for error.

Nothing seems to have really scared them. The couple even learned to differentiate animals at night by the colour and movement of eye reflections. Delia was trapped in her tent in the middle of the night, "like a mouse in a shoebox", by two black-maned lions.

No crawdads would have sung had her husband not banged on the side of their Land Rover.