The novel “The Crystal World” by J.G. Ballard was published for the first time in 1964 fixing up previously published short fiction.

Dr. Edward Sanders begins a journey up the Matarre River in Cameroon to reach the place where his colleague and ex-lover Suzanne Clair and her husband Max work in the Mont Royal leprosy treatment facility. The journey is made more complicated by unrest that adds to rumors of strange events that some of Sanders’ fellow travelers want to investigate.

The travelers find a passage but one of them, the photographer Matthieu, is found dead in the river covered with mysterious crystals. During the journey, the others discover that an unexplained phenomenon is leading to the progressive transformation of the forest into crystals.