Congo (novel)
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Congo is the name of a novel by Michael Crichton. The novel centers around an expedition searching for diamonds in the dense rain forest of Congo.
The novel starts with an abrupt end to an expedition in the dense forests of Congo when the expedition team is attacked and killed by an unknown foe and all contact with them lost. The expedition was in search of the lost city of Zinj, which is believed to be somewhere deep in the rain forest, and supposedly holds deposits of what are arguably the most valuable diamonds in the world. A video image taken by a camera there, and transmitted by satellite to the base station in the USA, shows a peculiar race of gorillas to be responsible for the murders. Those gorillas are different from normal gorillas in their appearance and behaviour. They are gray and rather small, and they seem to communicate via wheezing sounds. They are named Gorilla elliotensis.
Another expedition, led by Karen Ross, is launched to find out the truth and to find the city of Zinj, which is believed to be rich in a new type of diamond that would change the shape of technology and the world as we know it. This time the searchers take the famous African mercenary Munro as well as a female gorilla named Amy that can communicate with humans using sign language and her trainer Peter Elliot. They must hurry, as a rival consortium of European and Japanese corporations are out to get the diamonds as well, and the entire expedition becomes a race to reach the city of Zinj first. Unfortunately for Ross and her team, they run into many delays such as getting caught in an African civil war, having to bail out of their plane, and other threats hidden in the jungle.
Eventually, Ross and her expedition reach the City of Zinj and discover the consortium camp, like the original expedition's camp, in ruins and devoid of life. Ross and her team then first encounter the killer gorillas and are attacked. After beating them back, Ross, Elliot, and Munro explore the ruins and discover that the killer gorillas were bred by the ancient inhabitants of Zinj to guard the diamond mines from intruders. After several more attacks, Elliot, with the help of Amy, finds a way to tame the new gorillas, but their victory is cut short by the eruption of the nearby volcano. Ross, Elliot, Munro, and the rest of the team's survivors are forced to run for their lives. After fighting off an attack by African cannibals, the team manages to find a hot air balloon in a crashed consortium cargo plane and use it to escape.
The movie Congo was based on this novel.