No Mercy: A Journey to the Heart of the Congo

In the nineteenth century, Great Britain produced several generations of well-bred young men who left the mannered communities of their pastoral homeland and set out by ship and rail into a still untamed world. These adventurers were courageous and rugged, but they were also quite often highly educated gentlemen. Some made extraordinary contributions to the intellectual and artistic achievements of the period, Charles Darwin being perhaps the most famous. Of course, since the proliferation of the automobile and airplane, anyone with a small savings and a twinge of curiosity has been able to get out of their armchairs and venture forth to exotic lands. However, as the world began to rapidly shrink and homogenize, the whole endeavor began to lose its...well, its sense of adventure. Today, it's impossible to find a traveler with the outsized persona or the voracious intellect of, say, Richard Francis Burton.

Step in Redmond O'Hanlon, one of the few remaining travelers who is up to a good old-fashioned, pre-modem adventure. In previous books, he trudged through the Amazon Basin and the wilds of Borneo. This time, he sets out in search of a dinosaur that allegedly lives somewhere in the Congo. Along the way he explores the landscape, including its flora, fauna, and human inhabitants, and records the works for posterity. But Redmond O'Hanlon is no mere camera. Bill Bryson, possibly the best selling travel writer in the world, has called O'Hanlon "the finest writer of travel books in the English language." To the extent that this is true, it is because his books are so much more than travel accounts. Like the best of his nineteenth-century forebears, O'Hanlon possesses a mind that is both educated and intensely curious. For Redmond O'Hanlon, the world is a fascinating place, and such enthusiasm is infectious. But like all great travel accounts, No Mercy is much more than facts and figures. It is a dual journey, one into the heart of the Congo, the other into the inner regions of the human imagination. Farley, Powells.com

Lit with humor, full of African birdsong and told with great narrative force, No Mercy is the magnum opus of "probably the finest writer of travel books in the English language,"  as Bill Bryson wrote in Outside, "and certainly the most daring."  

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 Samalé, a beast whose three-clawed hands rip you across the back) make this a saga of much fear and trembling. Omnipresent 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.

An elegant, disturbing and deeply compassionate evocation of a vanishing world, extraordinary in its depth, scope and range of characters, No Mercy is destined to become a landmark work of travel, adventure and natural history. A quest for the meaning of magic and the purpose of religion, and a celebration of the comforts and mysteries of science, it is also--and above all--a powerful guide to the humanity that prevails even in the very heart of darkness.

From the Hardcover edition.

"Out of Redmond O'Hanlon's Africa has come a wonderful modern classic." Peter Bradshaw, Punch

"Old-fashioned, gut-wrenching, real life adventure...as much an inner journey that explores fear, religion, magic and childhood as it is a dangerous trek into the depths of the jungle." Helen Gibson, Time

"Engagin and beautifully written...O'Hanlon's trek through the equatorial African swamp-forest becomes a journey of personal discovery [and leads to] an understanding of life that he and his African companions can share...an understanding that comes from the heart." Robert Harms, Times Literary Supplement

"A tour de force...brilliant, hilarious, self-intoxicated." Thomas Pakenham, The London Times

"A huge, meaty, discusive book [with] a touch of greatness...an amplitude of vision that takes it beyond travel writing." Alexander Frater, The Observer

"A traveller's yarn de luxe [and] 'classic' O'Hanlon....It has a broad, Balzacian sweep, an air of magnum opus" Charles Nicholl, The Independent

Lit with humor, full of African birdsong and told with great narrative force, No Mercy is the magnum opus of "probably the finest writer of travel books in the English language," as Bill Bryson wrote in Outside, "and certainly the most daring."

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 Samalé, a beast whose three-clawed hands rip you across the back) make this a saga of much fear and trembling. Omnipresent 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.

An elegant, disturbing and deeply compassionate evocation of a vanishing world, extraordinary in its depth, scope and range of characters, No Mercy is destined to become a landmark work of travel, adventure and natural history. A quest for the meaning of magic and the purpose of religion, and a celebration of the comforts and mysteries of science, it is also--and above all--a powerful guide to the humanity that prevails even in the very heart of darkness.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [455-462]).