The Land of Hidden Men
1963
The jungle does not forgive ignorance. Gordon King, fresh from American medical school, has read about ancient Khmer kingdoms in dusty textbooks but nothing has prepared him for the living, breathing horror of the Cambodian interior. What begins as an expedition of scholarly curiosity becomes a descent into a world where the rules of civilization no longer apply. Alone and progressively ill, King stumbles through a landscape of staggering beauty and lethal danger. Elephants emerge from the mist. Ghostly warriors haunt his fever dreams. And then there is the jungle girl herself, a vision of a vanished world whose people guard secrets that could drive a man to madness or death. Burroughs constructs his adventure with relentless momentum, each chapter promising revelation while delivering deeper mystery. The ancient ruins promise answers, but what King finds there may be more dangerous than the predators that stalk him. For readers who grew up dreaming of lost cities and uncharted territories, this novel delivers the pure, uncut thrill of adventure fiction at its most elemental.
