Congo Journey is an autobiographical novel

Autobiographical novel

An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fiction elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction...

 by British author Redmond O'Hanlon

Redmond O'Hanlon

Redmond O'Hanlon, FRGS, FRSL is a British writer and scholar.-Life:O'Hanlon was born in 1947 in Dorset, England. He was educated at Marlborough College and then Oxford University. After taking his M.Phil. in nineteenth-century English studies in 1971 he was elected senior scholar, and in 1974...

, following his trip across Congo-Brazzaville

People's Republic of the Congo

The People's Republic of the Congo was a self-declared Marxist-Leninist socialist state that was established in 1970 in the Republic of the Congo...

 (now Republic of the Congo

Republic of the Congo

The Republic of the Congo , sometimes known locally as Congo-Brazzaville, is a state in Central Africa. It is bordered by Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , the Angolan exclave province of Cabinda, and the Gulf of Guinea.The region was dominated by...

), taking a friend to Lake Tele

Lake Tele

Lake Tele is a freshwater lake located in the north-east of the Republic of the Congo. It is located at .Lake Tele has often been mentioned as the home of the Mokèlé-mbèmbé , and is also allegedly the spot where pygmies killed and ate one of the creatures in about 1959...

 in search of Mokèlé-mbèmbé

Mokèlé-mbèmbé

Mokèlé-mbèmbé, meaning "one who stops the flow of rivers" in the Lingala language, is the name given to a large water-dwelling cryptid found in legends and folklore of the Congo River basin. It is sometimes described as a living creature and sometimes as a spirit. It could be considered loosely...

, a legendary Congo dinosaur.

Travel writer Michael Shapiro considers the book as one of the "top 30 travel books of all time," and declares the book, chronicling the author's search for the legendary dinosaur

Cryptozoology

Cryptozoology refers to the search for animals whose existence has not been proven...

, to be in the literary tradition of Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...

. O’Hanlon's adventure, he says, is by turns dangerous and funny, as he "takes the long way to the lake and nearly gets killed by a village headman", trying to save a baby gorilla, while he "battles his demons and the haunting spirits of Central Africa." According to Shapiro, O’Hanlon emerges from the jungle a changed man. The novel was republished in 1997 for USA readers as No Mercy: A Journey to the Heart of the Congo.