Robert Gribbin

Set amidst the woes of contemporary Congo – poverty, corruption, civil conflict, poaching, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and Ebola – a former big game hunter takes on the task of resurrecting a neglected game park to count and protect elephants and possibly to find surviving rhino. Besides the hunter, the cast of characters include a young Congolese budding scientist, a retired tracker, an escapee from the LRA, an ancient king, and a conscientious MSF doctor. Other colorful folks round out the tale, including cameo appearances by U.S. embassy personnel and U.S. Special Forces troops.
The story realistically tracks challenges confronting both conservation and Congolese society broadly drawn. It offers glimpses of hope as people strive to better their lives. It is a fast-paced novel with humor and historical anecdotes scattered throughout.
Robert Gribbin spent much of the last fifty years off-and-on in Africa, including stints in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and all its northern and eastern neighbors. He has driven Africa north to south and east to west, visited hundreds of game parks and countless villages. The Last Rhino is his fourth book. His memoir In the Aftermath of Genocide – the U.S. role in Rwanda is a detailed study of that human catastrophe. His novels State of Decay and Murder in Mombasa like The Last Rhino are impeccably set in the continent he knows so well.… (mehr)