Dr Forle is a British scientist on the last inhabited river station before the impassable interior. Leading an isolated international team, his research is into the eerie, blasted forest glades that the local Indians call Devils' Gardens - whose origin, he suspects, has important things to reveal about evolution. It is his life's work.
One stifling afternoon, a supply boat docks at the jetty carrying an unannounced Colonel and a sinister Judge. Later that night Forle witnesses something that will change his life. Unable to ignore what he has seen and yet unwilling to abandon his project, he is drawn deeper and deeper into a world of mystery and violence involving remote Indian tribes, illegal trades, renegade soldiers and the woman he has come to love. Edward Docx was born in 1972 and lives in London. His previous novels are The Calligrapher, and Self Help, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007, and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.
