The Devil's Garden — Edward Docx

Following the Man Booker-longlisted "Self Help", Edward Docx's electrifying new novel takes us to the heart of the Amazon. Dr Forle is a scientist working deep in the South American jungle on the last inhabited river station before the impassable interior. Every day, his research takes him into the strange and disturbing places that the Indians call Devils' Gardens. What creature is responsible for these evil-looking glades? He and his colleagues are determined to prove that they know. One afternoon, their supply boat docks at the jetty carrying a ruthless Colonel and a sinister Judge, and later that night Forle witnesses something that will change his life. Unable to ignore what he has seen and yet unwilling to abandon his work, he is drawn deeper and deeper into a world of mystery and violence involving remote Indian tribes, the illegal trades, renegade soldiers and the woman he has come to love. In the end, he must take sides. But which one? And what kind of a man is he?