Brazzaville Beach Book

In the heart of a civil war-torn African nation, primate researcher Hope Clearwater made a shocking discovery about apes and man . . .

Young, alone, and far from her family in Britain, Hope Clearwater contemplates the extraordinary events that left her washed up like driftwood on Brazzaville Beach. It is here, on the distant, lonely outskirts of Africa, where she must come to terms with the perplexing and troubling circumstances of her recent past. For Hope is a survivor of the devastating cruelities of apes and humans alike. And to move forward, she must first grasp some hard and elusive truths: about marriage and madness, about the greed and savagery of charlatan science . . . and about what compels seemingly benign creatures to kill for pleasure alone.

Praised as "brilliant" and "stunningly magical" by the Washington Post Book World, Boyd's award-winning novel is a brutal exploration of the sexual politics of humans and chimpanzees, set in present-day Africa. A survivor of the wars between apes and men, primate researcher Hope Clearwater contemplates the events that led to the discovery that even seemingly benign creatures can kill for the sheer pleasure of it.