Based on a real expedition by two American naturalists in the early 1900s, this novel starts out as a gung-ho African adventure story and becomes a stark portrait of misguided plans and colonial corruption. Willis Reed, a zoologist, and Guy Nichols, an entomologist, are commissioned by the Antwerp Zoo to bring back the first live specimen of an okapi, a shy, forest-dwelling creature that had taken on an almost mythical status after first being described by Sir Harry Johnston in 1902. Setting off into the jungles of central Africa, the men are confident about their mission to further scientific knowledge, but their idealism is eroded by encounters with Belgian colonial officials, fanatical rubber farmers, local tribes, and their own isolation.
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Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School—Equatoria blends the real and imagined paths of colonists into the Belgian Congo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Drawn by the work of British explorer Sir Harry Johnston, Oxford-educated zoologist Willis Reed compulsively follows the path of the never before captured (by Europeans) okapi. Along for the ride is university mate Guy Nichols, an entomologist, and Obieka, their chameleonlike African guide. Dreyer offers few background details of the era, but the literary portrayal of Belgian King Leopold's conquest of the region and the horrific practices of forced treaties and labor, enslavement, and mutilation for enormous financial gain lies like a thick fog over the jungle and its inhabitants. The demarcation between native land and the European interlopers is constant. The narrative offers an almost noir plotline—readers are forced to witness the slow and terrible destructiveness of Willis's folly and obsession. As Guy obliviously captures beetles with steadfast alacrity, Willis quickly fixates on femme fatale Alice De Quincy, the wife of a local commanding general. He roams farther into the jungle, beyond the bounds of his planned path and time frame, his thoughts and actions becoming a surreal jumble of purity and seductiveness, innocence and complicity, faith and violence. By the end of the story, an okapi is dead, Alice is lost, and "hyacinths drift like corpses on the water." This intense novel will be picked up by readers of historical fiction and should be recommended to fans of Double Indemnity.—Shannon Peterson, Kitsap Regional Library, WA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Intelligent, multi-layered, and absorbing, Equatoria is an African quest you want to read again and again." —Deon Meyer, bestselling author, Blood Safari
"A spellbinding tale, written in eloquent prose: passionate, comic, and always deeply moving." —Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger, Lafayette College, Pennsylvania
"Achingly beautiful prose creates a fever dream of our own dark nature. . . . This is a fine novel from a gifted novelist." —John Straley, Alaska's writer laureate and author, The Woman Who Married a Bear
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