Equatoria — Tom Dreyer

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.