No Mercy
Subtitle: A Journey to the Heart of the Congo
Edition: 1st American ed edition
Publisher: Knopf; Alfred A. Knopf
Published: May 6, 1997
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 461
ISBN-13: 9780679406556
Subjects: Mokele-mbembe; Travel - General; Likouala (Congo : Region); Central Africa - History; Travel; O'Hanlon, Redmond,; Likouala (Region); Africa; Essays & Travelogues; Journeys; O'Hanlon, Redmond; Travel / Africa; 1947-; Congo (Brazzaville); Description And Travel
First sentence: Marcellin with palmmaggots.
Description: Redmond O'Hanlon has journeyed among headhunters in deepest Borneo with the poet James Fenton, and amid the most reticent, imperilled and violent tribe in the Amazon Basin with a night-club manager. This, however, is his boldest journey yet.

Accompanied by Lary Shaffer - an American friend and animal behaviorist, a man of imperfect health and brave decency - he enters the unmapped swamp-forests of the People's Republic of the Congo, in search of a dinosaur rumored to have survived in a remote prehistoric lake.

The flora and fauna of the Congo are unrivalled, and with matchless passion O'Hanlon describes scores of rare and fascinating animals: eagles and parrots, gorillas and chimpanzees, swamp antelope and forest elephants. But as he was repeatedly warned, the night belongs to Africa, and threats both natural (cobras, crocodiles, lethal insects) and supernatural (from all-powerful sorcerers to Samale, a beast whose three-clawed hands rip you across the back) make this a saga of much fear and trembling.

Omni-present too are ecological depredations, political and tribal brutality, terrible illness and unnecessary suffering among the forest pygmies, and an appalling waste of human life throughout this little-explored region.