is having an affair with the wife of a Polish university colleague. Their marriage breaks down and irretrievably and tragically, John commits suicide. Hope flees to Africa to recover from the ordeal. The Grosso Arvore Research Centre, where Hope seeks asylum, is the creation of Eugene Mallabar. After studying wild chimps for the last twenty-five years, Mallabar knows more about them than anyone else on earth. He is the author of "The Peaceful Primate" and "Primate's Progress" and the recipient of million-dollar grants. Mallabar has just finished writing a magnum opus that will be the last word on the subject of the seemingly gentle beast with which man shares 98 percent of his DNA. Hope Clearwater, however, slowly comes to the realization that the chimps are up to no good as the two groups of chimpanzees she is studying come into lethal conflict. Males from the northern group, led by the alpha male Darius, start patrolling into the southerners' territory and then start to kill, with extreme cruelty, the rival males - one an old chimpanzee called Mr Jeb, and the other Muffin, an adolescent. What she sees brings Hope herself into conflict with Mallabar, and threatens the very existence of Grosso Arvore research project and his lifelong study of primates. In tandem with the other two narratives are Hope's recollections of her affair with Usman Shoukry, an Egyptian mercenary airforce pilot flying sorties in a MiG-15 against rebel army groups. Hope is able to meet him when she carries out supply runs in the reserve's landrover to Brazzaville, the provincial capital. He surprises her one time when he designs the world's smallest aeroplanes by strapping on wings and landing gears to house flies made from match-sticks and paper. They are both genuinely fond of each other during their time together, with Usman making plans to buy one of the run-down houses on the beach where they go to relax and swim, until he meets an untimely end on one of his missions. Hope herself gets caught up in the civil war when she and Ian Vail are captured by Dr Amilcar and his atomique boum volleyball team, who commandeer their landrover to return more quickly to the UNAMO stronghold in the Musave River Territories following a failed offensive against the Federal Army. The story intertwines different narrative strands as the reader is led into the vortex of Hope's complex