Demon of the Ruzizi

They say Gustave killed sixty people.Sixty is the respectable number.Some say three hundred.Gustave considers this an administrative failure.For decades, a monstrous Nile crocodile has haunted the rivers and lakes of Burundi. Twenty feet long, weighing nearly a ton, and carrying three bullet wounds and a particularly unpleasant grudge, Gustave has become a legend.A man-eater. A serial killer. A demon.He would like to tell you his side of the story.Born around 1940, Gustave has witnessed humanity at its very worst. He's survived hunters, bullets, civil war, incompetent fishermen, an ambitious French naturalist, and a hippopotamus with an attitude problem.He remembers everything.Unfortunately, he also remembers things rather selectively.As the bodies accumulate and his reputation grows, Gustave develops an increasingly elaborate philosophy of revenge, responsibility and why practically everything wrong with the world is somebody else's fault.Preferably yours.But beneath the savage humour lies something far more disturbing: the story of a creature who has spent a lifetime turning his suffering into justification, his memories into weapons, and his victims into statistics.And he's not the only one.Darkly funny, unsettling and unexpectedly moving, The Demon of the Ruzizi is a literary psychological horror novella about memory, cruelty, revenge and humanity's insatiable appetite for monsters.Narrated by one of Africa's most notorious crocodiles, it's a confession unlike any other.Gustave isn't asking for forgiveness.He'd just appreciate it if you stopped interrupting.After all, you've come this far because you want to know who he kills next.And that says rather more about you than it does about him.Inspired by the legend of Gustave, the enormous Nile crocodile of Burundi, The Demon of the Ruzizi blends historical fiction, pitch-black comedy and psychological horror into a deeply unconventional animal memoir.Some monsters are born. Others have remarkably good excuses.