No Mercy: A Journey Into the Heart of the Congo

by Redmond O'hanlon

Release Date: 30 June, 1998

Edition: Paperback

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Exceptional journy into the heart of man, nature & history

O'Hanlons book - in his own great tradition and the tradition of travel and soul writer Bruce Chattwick - is a splendid piece of Art. The book is a travelor's impression, a natural science description of flora & fauna of the Congolese jungle, an ethnographic description of tribes, traditions and beliefs, a political opinion on the communist state-form in Africa, it is also a fascinating plot and adventure story - but it is, above all, more than all these parts: the vivid, humorous, spell-binding and exact description provides the reader with an all encompassing inside into the human nature - ours and theirs - the fragility of life, and the exteme span of priorities the peoples populating this earth pursue. Even though one might guess the actual outcome of the trip as such, I read the entire book in one spell-bound session, laughing at times, having shivers running up my spine at others - this book sticks in your memory, and deepens the understanding of the world. Above all because O'Hanlon does not teach, preach or offers opinions: almost all is written in direct speech, and where not, like a diary - the reader travels with the author, is experiencing all his adventures looking over his shoulder. Therefore the impact is strikingly direct. Also, I'd say, it is a must read for all who work in or for-, or are interested in central Afrika - and to others who wonder why things seem to happen differently, and according to different agendas, in that part of the world.

A throwback to a hallowed English tradition

For all those readers and reviewers who loved this book (and you are obviously in the majority), I recommend the works of W. H. Hudson, a 19th Century version of O'Hanlon in South America. I particularly recommend Hudson's Green Mansions as a starting point. There are differences in the writers (100 years, and two different continents to start off with). Further, Hudson is the more poetic and better writer in my opinion, but that's something for each reader to decide on his or her own.-In any case, they both belong to that peculiar English tradition of intrepid, eccentric explorers bumbling about in foreign regions full of lethal flora, fauna and humanity all the while making endearing and heroic fools of themselves to the natives and the readers. O'Hanlon's quest is particularly baroque: searching for a reported dinosaur in Lake Tele in the Congo basin, and one is only surprised that O'Hanlon's American companion Lary didn't make him sign his release note a hundred pages earlier: "I, Redmond, declare that I am going to the Lake Tele deathtrap of my own free will and I hereby forgive Lary his escape." O'Hanlon's attachment to the gorillla Bobo is undoubtedly the most touching part of the book (and one of the exceedingly few parts where the title does not apply.) I would say that it shows O'Hanlon's essential "humanity" except that, after O'Hanlon's discourse on the similarity of our two species, I'm not at all sure it's the appropriate term-O'Hanlon informs us that the Western Bantu word for "hero" comes from the verb meaning "to enter oblivion, to be lost, to become a spirit."-O'Hanlon has certainly proved himself a hero in this sense! One is tempted to exclaim "Good Show!" at the end of the book if only for this reason.-I only gave the book 4 stars because, as I said, Hudson's just a notch above him in my opinion.