The Devil's Garden

Author	Docx, Edward
Year	2011
First published	2011
Publisher	London: Picador
Number of pages	323
Edition	First UK hardback
ISBN	9780330463508
Keywords	thriller, religion vs science, postcolonial issues/setting, entomology, arthropodology, SCIENTIST CHARACTERS, scientist main character, FMS Library Book

Abstract

Dr Forle is a scientist living on an Amazon river station deep in the South American jungle where he and his international crew of colleagues work with locals to study the eerie forest glades that the Indians call ‘devil’s gardens’. Who or what has created these seemingly cursed places? The answer, he hopes, will change the way we think about evolution and the nature of life itself.

But when a sinister Colonel and a cynical Judge arrive, life at the station is thrown into chaos. These men claim to be registering the local Indian tribes to vote and yet, on the night of their arrival, Forle witnesses an act of violence that he cannot ignore. From that moment on he is drawn deeper and deeper into a world of brutality and corruption until he finds himself in the midst of a small war involving remote tribes, renegade soldiers, cocaine growers and the woman he has come to love.

The Devil’s Garden is a contemporary and mesmeric study of the hidden human heart. It is about religion and science, about the ancient and the modern, about love and exploitation, about the clash between the individual and the powerful opposing forces that seek to determine our future. (Author’s website)