THE JUNGLE SOUTH OF THE MOUNTAIN

An unsettling, visceral and brilliantly imagined novel about the stories we believe, the lies we tell, and the choices we make to protect what we love, from award-winning narrative journalist, primatologist and internationally published author of The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary.

In an unnamed country on the northern coast of South America, a scientist named Stanley is deeply embedded in the life of the rainforest. He's been studying a group of capuchin monkeys for eight years—seven since his wife and fellow researcher, Maria, left him, and their mentor, Professor Collymore, mysteriously disappeared.

The country is preparing for a hotly contested election, and rumours abound of a rebellion stirring in the jungle south of the Voltzberg mountain. Stanley is only vaguely aware of this, as he's focused on his research, and his conviction that Maria will one day come back to him. Suddenly, though, his research is violently threatened: one of his beloved monkeys goes missing, and then another. Something is killing them, one by one.

Stanley decides to take matters into his own hands, but quickly learns that there are forces in the jungle as difficult to quell as the spirit of rebellion brewing in the south. Soon, Stanley finds everything he holds dear—his livelihood, his monkeys, his very life—is in danger. The Jungle South of the Mountain is a chilling, visceral, brilliantly imagined novel about the stories we believe, the lies we tell, and the choices we make to protect what we love.

ANDREW WESTOLL is an award-winning narrative journalist and internationally published author. A former biologist and primatologist, his books include The Riverbones, a travel memoir set in the jungles of Suriname, and The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, which was a national bestseller and winner of the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. The Jungle South of the Mountain is his first novel.